• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.125-139
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• 2016

For seismic retrofitting of masonry walls, the use of fibre reinforced cement-based mortar for bonding the fibre grids can eliminate some of the shortcomings related to the use of resin as bonding material. The results of an experimental testing program on masonry walls retrofitted with fibre reinforced mortar and fibre grids are presented in this paper. Seven squat masonry walls were tested under unidirectional lateral displacement reversals and constant axial load. Steel anchors were used to increase the effectiveness of the bond between the fibre grids and the masonry walls. Application of fibre grids on both lateral faces of the walls effectively improved the hysteretic behaviour and specimens could be loaded until slip occurred in the horizontal joint between the masonry and the bottom concrete stub. Application of the fibre grids on a single face did not effectively improve the hysteretic behaviour. Retrofitting with fibre reinforced mortar only prevented the early damage but did not effectively increase deformation capacity. When the boundaries of the cross sections were not properly confined, midplane splitting of the masonry walls occurred. Steel anchors embedded in the walls in the corners area effectively prevented this type of failure.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.691-704
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• 2014

Reinforced concrete (RC) shear walls are commonly used for building structures to resist seismic loading. While the RC shear walls can have a high load-carrying capacity, they tend to fail in a brittle mode under shear, accompanied by forming large diagonal cracks and bond splitting between concrete and steel reinforcement. Improving seismic performance of shear walls has remained a challenge for researchers all over the world. Engineered Cementitious Composite (ECC), featuring incredible ductility under tension, can be a promising material to replace concrete in shear walls with improved performance. Currently, the application of ECC to large structures is limited due to the lack of the proper constitutive models especially under shear. In this paper, a new Cyclic Softening Membrane Model for reinforced ECC is proposed. The model was built upon the Cyclic Softening Membrane Model for reinforced concrete by (Hsu and Mo 2010). The model was then implemented in the OpenSees program to perform analysis on several cases of shear walls under seismic loading. The seismic response of reinforced ECC compared with RC shear walls under monotonic and cyclic loading, their difference in pinching effect and energy dissipation capacity were studied. The modeling results revealed that reinforced ECC shear walls can have superior seismic performance to traditional RC shear walls.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.41 no.6
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• pp.691-710
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• 2012

One of the most popular and commonly used strengthening techniques to protect against earthquakes is to infill the holes in reinforced concrete (RC) frames with fully reinforced concrete infills. In some cases, windows and door openings are left inside infill walls for architectural or functional reasons during the strengthening of reinforced concrete-framed buildings. However, the seismic performance of multistory, multibay, reinforced concrete frames that are strengthened by reinforced concrete wing walls is not well known. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the experimental behavior of vulnerable multistory, multibay, reinforced concrete frames that were strengthened by introducing wing walls under a lateral load. For this purpose, three 2-story, 2-bay, 1/3-scale test specimens were constructed and tested under reversed cyclic lateral loading. The total shear wall (including the column and wing walls) length and the location of the bent beam bars were the main parameters of the experimental study. According to the test results, the addition of wing walls to reinforced concrete frames provided significantly higher ultimate lateral load strength and higher initial stiffness than the bare frames did. While the total shear wall length was increased, the lateral load carrying capacity and stiffness increased significantly.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.10 no.5
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• pp.635-655
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• 2016

The effects of reinforcement on the horizontal and vertical deformations of geosynthetic reinforced retaining walls are investigated under a well-known seismic load (San Jose earthquake, 1955). Retaining walls are designed with internal and external stability (with appropriate factor of safety) and deformation is chosen as the main parameter for describing the wall behavior under seismic load. Retaining walls with various heights (6, 8, 10, 12 and 14 meter) are optimized for geosynthetics arrangement, and modeled with a finite element method. The stress-strain behavior of the walls under a well-known loading type, which has been used by many previous researchers, is investigated. A comparison is made between the reinforced and non-reinforced systems to evaluate the effect of reinforcement on decreasing the deformation of the retaining walls. The results show that the reinforcement system significantly controls the deformation of the top and middle of the retaining walls, which are the critical points under dynamic loading. It is shown that the optimized reinforcement system in retaining walls under the studied seismic loading could decrease horizontal and vertical deformation up to 90% and 40% respectively.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.477-487
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• 2021

This study focuses on the influence of strong ground motion duration on the response and collapse probability of reinforced concrete walls with a predominant response in flexure. Walls with different height and mass were used to account for a broad spectrum of configurations and fundamental periods. The walls were designed following the specifications of the Chilean design code. Non-linear models of the reinforced concrete walls using a distributed plasticity approach were performed in OpenSees and calibrated with experimental data. Special attention was put on modeling strength and stiffness degradation. The effect of duration was isolated using spectrally equivalent ground motions of long and short duration. In order to assess the behavior of the RC shear walls, incremental dynamic analyses (IDA) were performed, and fragility curves were obtained using cumulative and non-cumulative engineering demand parameters. The spectral acceleration at the fundamental period of the wall was used as the intensity measure (IM) for the IDAs. The results show that the long duration ground motion set decreases the average collapse capacity in walls of medium and long periods compared to the results using the short duration set. Also, it was found that a lower median intensity is required to achieve moderate damage states in the same medium and long period wall models. Finally, strength and stiffness degradation are important modelling parameters and if they are not included, the damage in reinforced concrete walls may be greatly underestimated.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 1999.03a
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• pp.145-152
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• 1999

In the applying of the reinforced soil method, it would be possible to obtain reinforcement effect more than before in terms of economic if high water content clayey soils could be used as embanking material. Futhermore it would be possible to expect the expansion of the applying field of reinforced soil method too. In this study, the authors describe the analysis results on the behavior of 5 meter high walls reinforced with nonwoven geotextile having the permeability and woven geotextile or geogrid having large tensile strength on the soil ground. The behavior of the walls were investigated for about 100 days after construction and the deformations of reinforcements, lateral soil pressures, vertical and horizontal displacements of the walls were examined by automatical measuring system. It was found that this kinds of reinforcing system might effectively improve the performance of the steep walls by virtue of the reciprocal action between soil and reinforcements, and it might be concluded that construction of the clayey reinforced soil walls with three kinds of geotextiles could be done successfully even on the comparative weak ground.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.70 no.2
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• pp.133-141
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• 2019

The aim of the present paper is to present the cyclic behavior of strengthened reinforced concrete shear wall test specimen, which was reinforced with cold drawn welded wire mesh fabric. Two reinforced concrete shear wall specimens have been tested in the present study. The walls were tested under reversed cyclic loading with loading applied near the tip of the walls. The control wall is tested in its original state to serve as a baseline for the evaluation of the repair and strengthening techniques. The two test specimens include a control wall and a repaired wall. The control wall test specimen was designed and detailed to simulate non-ductile reinforced concrete shear walls that do not meet the modern seismic provisions. The response of the original wall was associated with the brittle failure. The control shear wall was repaired by addition of the reinforcements and the concrete and then it was reloaded. The effectiveness of the repair technique was investigated. Test results indicate that there can be a near full restoration of the walls' strength. The data from this test, augmenting other data available in the literature, will be useful in calibrating improved analytical methods as they are developed.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.239-246
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• 2015

Reinforced concrete shear walls are effective for resisting lateral loads imposed by wind or earthquakes. Observed damages of the shear wall in recent earthquakes in Chile(2010) and New Zealand(2011) exceeded expectations. Various analytical models have been proposed in order to incorporate such response features in predicting the inelastic response of RC shear walls. However, the model has not been implemented into widely available computer programs, and has not been sufficiently calibrated with and validated against extensive experimental data at both local and global response levels. In this study, reinforced concrete shear walls were modeled with fiber slices, where cross section and reinforcement details of shear walls can be arranged freely. Nonlinear analysis was performed by adding nonlinear shear spring elements that can represent shear deformation. This analysis result will be compared with the existing experiment results. To investigate the nonlinear behavior of reinforced concrete shear walls, reinforced concrete single shear walls with rectangular wall cross section were selected. The analysis results showed that the yield strength of the shear wall was approximately the same value as the experimental results. However, the yielding displacement of the shear wall was still higher in the experiment than the analysis. The analytical model used in this study is available for the analysis of shear wall subjected to high axial forces.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.601-613
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• 2007

It is reported that factors affecting the behavior of reinforced earth retaining walls built on soft ground are not only basic physical properties but also the increase of load by the reinforced earth retaining walls, consolidation period, pore water pressure, etc. This study analyzed the behavior of reinforced earth retaining walls and soft ground using SAGE CRISP, a ground analysis program. First, we examined the effect of the replacement method, which was to prevent the excessive displacement of reinforced earth retaining walls, in improving the behavior of the walls. Second, we compared and analyzed how the behavior of ground is affected by the vertical interval of stiffeners on the back of reinforced earth retaining walls after the application of the replacement method. Lastly, we proposed the optimal replacement width and depth in the application of the replacement method. The results of this study proved that the replacement method is considerably effective in improving the behavior of reinforced earth retaining walls. In addition, the vertical interval of stiffeners on the back of reinforced earth retaining walls appeared effective in improving the horizontal displacement of the top of retaining walls but not much effective in improving the vertical displacement of the back of retaining walls. In addition, improvement in horizontal-vertical displacement resulting from the increase in replacement width was not significant and this suggests that the increase of replacement width is not necessary. With regard to an adequate replacement depth, we proposed the ratio of replacement depth to the height of retaining walls(D/H) according to the ratio of the thickness of the soft layer to the height of retaining walls(H/T).

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.123-134
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• 2022

The use of reinforced soil walls has grown significantly over the last few decades due to their ease construction and economical efficiency. Many damage cases of the reinforced soil walls have been reported as the use of reinforced soil walls increases. Inappropriate design and construction management mainly induce these problems. This paper describes case study on two damaged geogrid reinforced soil walls. The causes of the damage are investigated through the site investigations and proper countermeasures are proposed.