Assessment of Energy Degradation Behavior of RC Shear Walls

In current practice, structural analysis software that are widely used for design and assessment purposes (e.g. CSI ETABS) offer nonlinear modeling capabilities and are able to reflect energy dissipation behavior. This can be implemented by modification of the hysteresis type and introduction of so-called energy factors into the model for specific deformation levels. Each energy factor represents the reduction in energy dissipation per cycle(s) at the associated deformation level. However, there is a lack of research and guidance in the literature regarding these coefficients, and current earthquake codes do not provide any recommended values to be used. Therefore, the energy degradation behavior, which is critical to accurately represent the seismic performance is often neglected in practical engineering applications. In cases where it is considered, engineers typically rely on intuition to input certain coefficients, or at best, approximate values derived from experimental results are used to simulate similar behavior. This study aims to determine the energy factors to be used in common analysis software to represent energy degradation in RC shear walls under cyclic behavior.