Assessment of the onset of global wall buckling in a tall reinforced concrete residential building

Before 2010, the global buckling of thin walls in multistory buildings during strong shaking was not considered a significant concern. However, after the 2010 Chile earthquake, reconnaissance teams documented global buckling failures in the thin walls of three residential buildings, one in Santiago and two in Concepción. These buildings shared similar structural configurations primarily based on structural walls. Similar cases were also observed following the 2011 New Zealand earthquake, highlighting potential issues with current structural configurations and wall thicknesses in seismic design. Our research focuses on a reinforced concrete shear wall building in Concepción, Chile, which suffered severe structural damage, including global buckling in slender walls, during the 2010 earthquake. We analyzed global and local structural responses through a three-dimensional nonlinear finite element model. The comparison of vertical strain demands at buckled boundary elements with theoretical values required to trigger buckling in thin walls revealed that the vertical strain demands aligned with the values necessary for the onset of out-of-plane buckling.