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Aly, Nader1; Ashour, Ahmed2 and Galal, Khaled3

1 Ph.D. Student, Department of Building, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Concordia University, Montréal, Québec, Canada, n_aly@encs.concordia.ca
2 Assistant Professor, Cairo University, Dept. of Civil Eng., Cairo, Egypt. Former Postdoctoral Fellow, Concordia University, Montréal, Québec, Canada, H3G 2W1, eng.ahmed3ashour@gmail.com
3 Professor, Department of Building, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Concordia University, Montréal, Québec, Canada, galal@bcee.concordia.ca

ABSTRACT
The National Building Code of Canada, NBCC-15 has recently added a new Seismic Force Resisting System (SFRS) category, ductile shear walls, for RM structures designed and detailed according to Canadian Standards Association (CSA) S304-14. Ductile RM shear walls have special detailing requirements to ensure sufficient inelastic deformation capacity. Consequently, CSA S304-14 assigned higher ductility-related force modification factors to ductile RM shear walls compared to that of  moderately ductile walls. However, NBCC-15 assigned the same building height limits for the ductile and moderately ductile walls. This study aims to assess (i.e. numerically) the seismic performance and collapse capacity of ductile RM buildings, having heights exceeding the code limit, built using RM shear walls with boundary elements as the SFRS. In this regards, a 12-story RM building located in a site in Vancouver, British Columbia was designed according to CSA S304-14 with ductile RM structural walls having confined boundary elements. The reference building had a total height exceeding the code specified limit. The seismic performance was evaluated using nonlinear pseudostatic pushover and Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA). The quantification of seismic performance and potential collapse capacity was executed using the procedure outlined in FEMA P695. The results revealed a superior seismic performance and high collapse capacity for the reference RM shear wall building. The seismic collapse capacity was found to be almost twice the acceptable values even at collapse probabilities as low as 5%. Therefore, these promising results indicate the possibility of using RM shear walls with well confined boundary elements as a SFRS in mid- and high-rise applications in regions with high seismic hazard. The findings of this study shed the light on the possibility of increasing the height limits assigned to ductile RM shear wall buildings.

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