Tests on reinforced concrete U-shaped walls subjected to torsion and flexure

Abstract

This data paper describes an experimental campaign on two reinforced concrete (RC) U-shaped walls, including details of the test units, materials, test setup, loading protocol, instrumentation, primary observations and response of each unit during testing, organization of the test data in the public open source research data repository (DOI: 10.14428/DVN/FDJ4EU), and examples of derived data. The two wall units represent the lower stories of a half-scale 6-story prototype core wall that was designed for medium-to-high ductility. The tests conducted aimed at assessing the flexural and torsional response and capacity of RC U-shaped walls. The first wall unit, UW1, was tested for axial-flexure and subjected to quasi-static reverse-cyclic bending about its weak axis until failure. Furthermore, UW1 was subjected to an additional overturning moment to increase the shear span. The second wall unit, UW2, was tested for axial-torsion and subjected to a quasi-static reverse-cyclic rotation about its vertical axis until failure. Both wall units were subjected to a constant axial load ratio of 5%. A range of conventional instrumentation was used to capture salient global and local measurements of the wall, including three-dimensional (3D) digital image correlation on multiple faces. High-definition fiber-optic sensors were also utilized to capture the entire strain profile of several longitudinal reinforcing bars in each wall unit.