Behavior of Reinforced Concrete Walls with Mesh Reinforcement Subjected to Cyclic Loading

Reinforced concrete walls are used commonly in high-rise building construction as the primary lateral load-resisting system. An experimental study undertaken to access the seismic behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) walls constructed prior to the introduction of seismic design requirements in the Turkish Seismic Code 2007 is presented. The geometric characteristics and material properties of the test specimens were replicated from those of existing buildings. The experimental work described herein involves the testing of a full scale shear wall. The test specimen was designed to represent the lower stories of structural walls in high-rise buildings. Testing program consisted of monotonically increasing reversed cyclic lateral loading. The wall was 3.2m tall, 1.4m length, 0.2m thickness and had an aspect ratio (height-to-width ratio) of 2.285. 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 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.