Behavior, design, and modeling of structural walls and coupling beams — Lessons from recent laboratory tests and earthquakes

Abstract

Observed wall damage in recent earthquakes in Chile and New Zealand, where modern building codes exist, exceeded expectations. In these earthquakes, structural wall damage included boundary crushing, reinforcement fracture, and global wall buckling. Recent laboratory tests also have demonstrated inadequate performance in some cases, indicating a need to review code provisions, identify shortcomings and make necessary revisions. Current modeling approaches used for slender structural walls adequately capture nonlinear flexural behavior; however, strength loss due to buckling of reinforcement and nonlinear and shear-flexure interaction are not adequately captured. Additional research is needed to address these issues. Recent tests of reinforced concrete coupling beams indicate that diagonally-reinforced beams detailed according to ACI 318-11 1 can sustain plastic rotations of about 6% prior to significant strength loss and that relatively simple modeling approaches in commercially available computer programs are capable of capturing the observed responses. Tests of conventionally-reinforced beams indicate less energy dissipation capacity and strength loss at approximately 4% rotation.

Seismic Response Analysis of Reinforced Concrete Wall Structure Using Macro Model

“…However, it requires tremendous efforts and time for modeling and numerical computations. The macroscopic models, on the other hand, are simple and practical though their application is limited depending on the assumptions that each model is based on (Kabeyasawa et al 1982;Vulcano and Bertero 1987;Orakcal 2004;Orakcal et al 2006;Park and Eom 2007;Monti and Spacone 2000;Wallace 2012). Currently, because of the efficiency of the macroscopic models, existing structural analysis platforms such as Perform 3D (Computer and Structures Inc. 2006), OpenSEES (PEER 2001), and DRAIN-2DX (Prakash et al 1993) use macroscopic models for the nonlinear analysis of wall systems.…”

An Estimate of the Yield Displacement of Coupled Walls for Seismic Design

“…4.1 and 4.2) led to an excellent preliminary design in a single step. Past behaviors of walls under earthquake motions (Wallace 2012;Kim et al 2016) force us to consider improvements in the design.…”

Seismic Capacity Design and Retrofit of Reinforced Concrete Staggered Wall Structures

“…The seismic performance of RC shear wall structures have been widely investigated by many researchers (Wallace 2012;Kim 2016). The shear walls are also effective in preventing spread of fire .…”