Failure analysis of monolithic precast shear wall structure subjected to strong earthquake

In recent years, the risks of natural (earthquakes) and artificial (terrorist attacks) disasters to buildings and communities have attracted increasing attention. On the other hand, an increasing number of prefabricated building structures have been constructed in urban areas of China owing to the promotion of the government. The failure behaviours of prefabricated building structures subjected to disastrous actions have not been thoroughly investigated and understood. Therefore, in this study, we have established a finite element model of the monolithic prefabricated struc-ture. A damage plasticity model was introduced to describe the failure of concrete materials and critical members of the structure. Using the failure criterion and element deletion techniques, the overall failure of the structure in the pattern of total collapse was obtained. The analytical results showed that effective vertical connections can improve the collapse resistance of prefabricated structures. The simulation results verified the proposed method and provided new insights for the anti-collapse design of monolithic precast structures.