Machine Learning-Based Assessment of Energy Behavior of RC Shear Walls

Current seismic design codes primarily rely on the strength and displacement capacity of structural members and do not account for the influence of the ground motion duration or the hysteretic behavior characteristics. The energy-based approach serves as a supplemental index to response quantities and includes the effect of repeated loads in seismic performance. The design philosophy suggests that the seismic demands are met by the energy dissipation capacity of the structural members. Therefore, the energy dissipation behavior of the structural members should be well understood to achieve an effective energy-based design approach. This study focuses on the energy dissipation capacity of reinforced concrete (RC) shear walls that are widely used in high seismic regions as they provide significant stiffness and strength to resist lateral forces. A machine learning (Gaussian Process Regression (GPR))-based predictive model for energy dissipation capacity of shear walls is developed as a function of wall design parameters. Eighteen design parameters are shown to influence energy dissipation, whereas the most important ones are determined by applying sequential backward elimination and by using feature selection methods to reduce the complexity of the predictive model. The ability of the proposed model to make robust and accurate predictions is validated based on novel data with a prediction accuracy (the ratio of predicted/actual values) of around 1.00 and a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.93. The outcomes of this study are believed to contribute to the energy-based approach by (i) defining the most influential wall properties on the seismic energy dissipation capacity of shear walls and (ii) providing predictive models that can enable comparisons of different wall design configurations to achieve higher energy dissipation capacity.