Numerical modelling of the seismic behaviour of a 7-story building: NEES benchmark

The American NEES Consortium Inc. (NEESinc) has performed a seismic research project around an uniaxial shaking table test on a structure representing a full-scale vertical slice of a 7-story reinforced concrete wall building. This paper deals with the numerical strategy adopted in the laboratory 3S-R for a ‘‘blind’’ simulation of the non linear behaviour of the specimen. Multifiber Timoshenko beam elements are used for the finite element mesh of the reinforced concrete walls. Constitutive models are based on damage mechanics for concrete and plasticity for steel. It is shown that the proposed modelling strategy describes accurately the global behaviour of the structure (even though the prediction is ‘‘blind’’). Then, comparison with the experimental results helps to identify the deficiencies of the original numerical model and to propose remedies in order to improve its performance. Based on the results obtained it appears possible to use this approach to investigate numerically the behaviour of a wider variety of configurations that is practically impossible to study experimentally.