Boundary Elements of Lightly Reinforced Concrete Shear Walls: Investigation on Key Parameters Effect

The drift capacity of lightly reinforced concrete shear walls is related to the tensile strain demand of longitudinal reinforcement. The main aim of the minimum reinforcement requirements of different design codes is to ensure the formation of secondary cracks that decrease the tensile strain demand of the reinforcements. The current approach for evaluating this strain demand considers only in-plane deformations. Therefore, the effect of out-of-plane deformation, and consequently, the parameters influencing its development, such as reinforcement type, concrete strength, and layers of reinforcement, are not accounted for in the minimum reinforcement ratio requirements. This study investigated the influence of out-of-plane deformation on the deformation capacity of lightly reinforced shear walls. For this purpose, five numerical simulations are verified against recent experimental results. A parametric study is conducted to investigate the effects of the wall height, reinforcement type, concrete strength, and reinforcement layers on the behavior of the shear walls and their idealized boundary element prisms. The results indicated the progression and recovery of significant out-of-plane deformations during in-plane loading in thin walls. Consequently, a noticeable increase in the strain demand of the longitudinal reinforcement was observed, which inevitably reduced the wall deformation capacity. In addition, the correlation between the key parameters of the simulated models and anticipated failure parameters is investigated, and the importance of three-dimensional assessment is emphasized. Finally, the results of shear wall models compared with those of their corresponding idealized boundary element prisms, and the efficiency of boundary element prisms in capturing the critical response parameters evaluated.

کلیدواژه ها:

Reinforced Concrete Shear WallBoundary ElementMinimum Longitudinal ReinforcementRebar StrainOut ، of ، Plane Buckling