Teknik Dergi/Technical Journal of Turkish Chamber of Civil Engineers, vol.22, no.3, pp.5487-5508, 2011 (SCI-Expanded)
The new version of the Turkish Seismic Code was released in 2007 and the capacity design approach for high ductility structural walls was introduced for the first time. The practicing engineers, however, mentioned various problems especially related with the shear design of structural walls. Because of this reason, an in-depth comparative study was conducted to examine the differences and similarities of the design approaches of Turkish Seismic Code, American Reinforced Concrete Code and various studies in the literature that focus on the capacity design of high-ductility structural walls. In addition, differences between normalductility structural walls of Turkish Seismic Code and ordinary walls of American Reinforced Concrete Code were also examined. It was determined that in the current version of the Turkish Seismic Code, several problems in clauses related to structural wall design exist. Several modifications were proposed in order to improve the structural wall design of the structural walls.