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This work focuses on the modelling issues related to the adoption of the pushover analysis for the seismic assessment of existing reinforced concrete (RC) structures. To this purpose a prototype reference structure, one of the RC shear walls designed according to the multi-fuse concept and tested on shaking table for the CAMUS project, is modelled at different levels of refinement. The meso-scale of a stiffness-based fibre element and the micro-scale of the finite element (FE) method are herein adopted; in the latter separate elements are adopted for the concrete, the steel and the steel-concrete interface. This first of the two companion papers presents in detail the wall under study, illustrating the design philosophy, the geometry of the wall, the instrumentation set-up and the test programme. The two modelling approaches are then described; the most important points in terms of element formulation and constitutive relations for materials are presented and discussed for each approach, in the light of the particular design of the wall and of its experimental behaviour. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a companion paper two different modelling approaches have been described, operating at the meso-scale of the fibre elements and at the micro-scale of the finite element (FE) method. The aim of this paper is to explore the efficiency of these models in the pushover analysis for the seismic assessment of existing reinforced concrete (RC) structures. To this purpose a prototype reference structure, one of the RC shear walls designed according to the multi-fuse concept and tested on shaking table for the CAMUS Project, is modelled at different levels of refinement. At the micro-scale the reinforcement and anchorage details are described with increasing accuracy in separate models, whereas at the meso-scale one single model is used, where each element represents a large part of the structure. Static incremental non-linear analyses are performed with both models to derive a capacity curve enveloping the experimental results and to reproduce the damage pattern at the displacement level where failure is reached. The comparison between experimental and numerical results points out the strong and weak points of the different models inside the procedure adopted, and the utility of an integration of results from both approaches. This study confirms, even for the rather difficult case at study, the capability of the pushover in reproducing the non-linear dynamic response, both at a global and a local level, and opens the way to the use of the models within a displacement-based design and assessment procedure. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]