Lateral stiffness and vibration characteristics of RC shear walls bonded with thin composite plates

This paper deal with the bending and vibration analysis of shear wall structures strengthened by bonded composite plates. In the analytical formulation, the adherents and the adhesives are all modeled as shear walls elements, using the mixed finite element method. A free vibration analysis is carried out to determine the frequencies of multistory strengthened shear wall structures. Several test problems are examined to demonstrate the accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed method. Numerical results are presented that relates to the performance of reinforced concrete shear walls bonded with composite plates, in which a reinforced concrete shear wall strengthened by steel plates is treated as a limiting case. The effects of bonded plates on vibration characteristics of RC shear walls are also studied.