Civil Engineering Association

This paper presents the simulation of the nonlinear dynamic response of a full-scale seven-story reinforced
concrete shear wall shaking table specimen under base excitations representing four earthquake records
of increasing intensity. The study was motivated by the participation in the blind prediction contest of
the shaking table specimen organized by University of California at San Diego (UCSD), NEES, and
Portland Cement Association (PCA). Owing to the time constraints of the contest a relatively simple
two-dimensional (2d) model was used for the shear wall specimen. In this model, the shear wall was
represented by 2d beam–column elements with fiber discretization of the cross-section that account for
the interaction of the axial force with the bending moment. Upon conclusion of the contest, the available
experimental measurements permitted a thorough examination of the analytical results. While the measured
data confirmed the excellent accuracy of the model predictions, some limitations also became apparent.
The paper addresses the benefits and limitations of the selected modeling strategy and investigates the
sensitivity of this type of model to parameter selection.