Nowadays, with growing population and the need of rapid methods for construction, using precast concrete structures is attended. Also, these structures have better quality in comparison with in-site ones. Past earthquakes have shown high damages applied to the precast concrete structures have been occurred in their connections. So the seismic behavior of a precast concrete structure depends significantly on the behavior of connections between the precast segments. Despite of the advantages of precasting, using precast concrete shear wall is limited in low seismic regions due to the lack of knowledge about this type of construction performance under seismic loading conditions. Therefore, the use of precast concrete shear walls needs further studies on seismic behavior of their connections. Due to the high cost of experimental studies, using comprehensive and efficient numerical methods that could predict the seismic behavior of this type of structures can be very effective. In this research, the seismic behavior of precast concrete shear walls were investigated and their performance were compared with similar in-site ones. For this purpose, the non-linear finite element analysis with ABAQUS software was used for modeling. In the beginning, several concrete shear walls with 4, 6 and 8 floors with two methods, uniform and tension compression (with and without boundary elements), were designed. These walls were modeled by ABAQUS software with both monolithic and precast ways and placed under lateral load. Precast walls panel was connected with two most common connector types in prefabricating industry, plate and sleeve connectors. The results of modeling and numerical analysis showed that ultimate strength in precast walls is very close to monolithic walls and difference between them is low. The maximum difference between the strength of precast and monolithic walls, with and without boundary elements, is 7 and 16 percent respectively. Precast walls show less ductility in comparison monolithic walls. Maximum differences of ductility between precast walls compared with monolithic walls are respectively 54 and 42 percent. Moreover results have shown the vertical connections in walls with boundary elements were more effective than the horizontal connections. Therefore, further strengthening of vertical connections can be effective in improving the performance of precaste concrete shear walls with boundary element. Also the sleeve connector showed better behavior in comparison with plate connector. Key Words Precast concrete shear wall, precast connections, seismic behavior, strength, ductility
