An improved multiple-vertical-line-element model for RC shear walls using ANN

The parameters of the multiple-vertical-line-element model (MVLEM) of reinforced concrete (RC) shear walls are often empirically determined, which causes large simulation errors. To improve the simulation accuracy of the MVLEM for RC shear walls, this paper proposed a novel method to determine the MVLEM parameters using the artificial neural network (ANN). First, a comprehensive database containing 193 shear wall specimens with complete parameter information was established. And the shear walls were simulated using the classic MVLEM. The average simulation errors of the lateral force and drift of the peak and ultimate points on the skeleton curves were approximately 18%. Second, the MVLEM parameters were manually optimized to minimize the simulation error and the optimal MVLEM parameters were used as the label data of the training of the ANN. Then, the trained ANN was used to generate the MVLEM parameters of the collected shear walls. The results show that the simulation error of the predicted MVLEM was reduced to less than 13% from the original 18%. Particularly, the responses generated by the predicted MVLEM are more identical to the experimental results for the testing set, which contains both flexure-control and shear-control shear wall specimens. It indicates that establishing MVLEM for RC shear walls using ANN is feasible and promising, and that the predicted MVLEM substantially improves the simulation accuracy.