The American Concrete Institute (ACI) has released a paper called Seismic Behavior of Flanged Reinforced Concrete Shear Walls under Cyclic Loading.
The paper, written by Bin Wang, Qing-Xuan Shi and Wen-Zhe Cai, tested five large-scale flanged reinforced concrete shear walls, including four T-shaped walls and one L-shaped wall under uniaxial and biaxial cyclic loading.
ACI says the investigation is intended to provide an insight into the failure mechanism and seismic behaviour of unsymmetrical shear walls, and to investigate the influence of loading procedure, detailing of boundary elements, and section shape on the cyclic response of the walls.
All the specimens experienced a flexure-dominant failure with the damage concentrated at the free end of the web.
According to ACI: “Test results showed that higher bearing capacity and stiffness but significant stiffness and strength degradations were observed for the case with the flange in tension. Whereas better energy dissipation capacity and deformation capacity were achieved for the case with the flange in compression.”
The failure mechanism suggests that special boundary element could be omitted at the web-flange intersection and optimal design should be conducted for the boundary element of the web opposite the flange, ACI concludes.
