Structural Behavior of Lightly Reinforced Shear Walls of Tunnel Form Buildings

Abstract

Abstract-The tunnel-form system has become a primary construction technique in building industry of Turkey as well as in many European countries. In these buildings, all the vertical load-carrying members are made of shear-walls, and floor system is flat plate. Both gravity and lateral loads are transferred to shear-walls. Despite their frequent applications, there is lack of experimental studies to understand the response of the shear walls of tunnel form buildings under extreme lateral loading conditions. In this study, experimental investigation on the inelastic seismic behavior of the shear walls of tunnel form buildings (i.e., box-type or panel systems) is presented. The test was carried out on full-scale rectangular shear wall specimen. The experimental program involves static testing of shear walls having mesh reinforcements under increasing lateral monotonic loading of shear wall specimen. The experimental results indicate that lightly reinforced structural walls of tunnel form buildings may exhibit brittle flexural failure under seismic action. This failure mechanism is of particular interest in emphasizing the mode of failure that is not routinely considered during seismic design of shear-wall dominant structural systems. This type of failure takes place due to rupturing of longitudinal reinforcement without crushing of concrete, therefore is of particular interest in emphasizing the mode of failure that is not routinely considered during seismic design of shear-wall dominant structural systems.Index Terms-Reinforced concrete, seismic design, shear-wall, shear-wall dominant buildings. I. INTRODUCTIONTunnel form building system is an industrialized construction technique in which structural walls and slabs of the building are cast in one operation by using steel forms having accurate dimensions and plain surfaces [1], [2]. Tunnel form buildings diverge from other conventional reinforced concrete structures with lack of beams and columns in their structural integrity. All the vertical members are made of shear walls and floor system is flat plate. These structures utilize all wall elements as primary load (wind and seismic as well as gravity) carrying members and vertical and lateral loads are distributed homogeneously to the foundation [3].In tunnel form construction, in situ concrete is poured into two half-tunnel forms to form shear walls and floor slabs simultaneously. When this process is repeated, usually in a Manuscript received May 24, 2013; revised July 10, 2013. This study was supported financially by Selcuk University BAP (project no: 11401018). The writer wish to express his sincere gratitude to the Selcuk University BAP 11401018.S. Bahadır Yüksel is with the Department of Civil Engineering, Engineering Faculty, Selcuk University, Konya, 42075, Turkey (e-mail: sbyuksel@selcuk.edu.tr).24hr cycle per floor, the residential units can be created with great rapidity [4]. In general, all the floor plans become the same due to the same steel tunnel forms being utilized in all of the stories. This c...