• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.7 no.5
• /
• pp.667-689
• /
• 2014

Structural walls (also known as shear walls) are one of the common lateral load resisting elements in reinforced concrete (RC) buildings in seismic regions. The performance of RC structural walls in recent earthquakes has exposed some problems with the existing design of RC structural walls. The main issues lie around the buckling of bars, out-of plane deformation of the wall (especially the zone deteriorated in compression), reinforcement getting snapped beneath a solitary thin crack etc. This study compares performance of a typical wall designed by different standards. For this purpose, a case study RC shear wall is taken from the Hotel Grand Chancellor in Christchurch which was designed according to the 1982 version of the New Zealand concrete structures standard (NZS3101:1982). The wall is redesigned in this study to comply with the detailing requirements of three standards; ACI-318-11, NZS3101:2006 and Eurocode 8 in such a way that they provide the same flexural and shear capacity. Based on section analysis and pushover analysis, nonlinear responses of the walls are compared in terms of their lateral load capacity and curvature as well as displacement ductilities, and the effect of the code limitations on nonlinear responses of the different walls are evaluated. A parametric study is also carried out to further investigate the effect of confinement length and axial load ratio on the lateral response of shear walls.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.37 no.2
• /
• pp.177-196
• /
• 2011

An economic, structurally effective and practically applicable strengthening technique was developed for reinforced concrete (RC) framed buildings. The idea of the technique is to convert the existing hollow brick infill wall into a load carrying system acting as a cast-in-place RC infill wall by bonding relatively thin high strength precast concrete PC panels to the plastered hollow brick infill. For this purpose, a total of eight one-third scale, one bay, one story frames were tested under reversed-cyclic lateral loads. Test frames were designed and constructed with common deficiencies observed in practice. Four different panel types were used for strengthening. Test results showed that both strength and stiffness of the frames were significantly improved by the introduction of PC panels. Experimental results were compared with the analytical approaches suggested by the authors.

• Earthquakes and Structures
• /
• v.18 no.5
• /
• pp.581-598
• /
• 2020

This paper aims to investigate the seismic behavior and influence parameters of the large-scaled thin-walled reinforced concrete (RC) tubular columns in air-cooled supporting structures of thermal power plants (TPPs). Cyclic loading tests and finite element analysis were performed on 1/8-scaled specimens considering the influence of wall diameter ratio, axial compression ratio, longitudinal reinforcement ratio, stirrup reinforcement ratio and adding steel diagonal braces (SDBs). The research results showed that the cracks mainly occurred on the lower half part of RC tubular columns during the cyclic loading test; the specimen with the minimum wall diameter ratio presented the earlier cracking and had the most cracks; the failure mode of RC tubular columns was large bias compression failure; increasing the axial compression ratio could increase the lateral bearing capacity and energy dissipation capacity, but also weaken the ductility and aggravate the lateral stiffness deterioration; increasing the longitudinal reinforcement ratio could efficiently enhance the seismic behavior; increasing the stirrup reinforcement ratio was favorable to the ductility; RC tubular columns with SDBs had a much higher bearing capacity and lateral stiffness than those without SDBs, and with the decrease of the angle between columns and SDBs, both bearing capacity and lateral stiffness increased significantly.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
• /
• v.23 no.5
• /
• pp.239-248
• /
• 2019

In this study, the out-of-plane seismic resistance of lightly-reinforced existing walls strengthened with thick RC jacket was investigated. The thick RC jacket with a thickness of 500 mm was placed at one side of the thin existing wall with a thickness of 150 mm. At the interface between the wall and RC jacket, a tee-shaped steel section with a number of anchor bolts and dowel bars was used as the shear connector. To investigate the connection performance and strengthening effects, the cyclic loading tests of four jacketed wall specimens were performed. The tests showed that the flexural strength of the jacketed walls under out-of-plane loading was significantly increased. During the initial behavior, the tee shear connector transferred forces successfully at the interface without slip. However, as the cracking, spalling, and crushing of the concrete increased in the exiting walls, the connection performance at the interface was significantly degraded and, consequently, the strength of the jacketed walls was significantly decreased. The flexural strength of the jacketed walls with tee shear connector was estimated considering the full and partial composite actions of the tee shear connector.

• Computers and Concrete
• /
• v.2 no.2
• /
• pp.111-123
• /
• 2005

The ductility of reinforced concrete bearing walls subjected to high axial loading and moment can be enhanced by improving the deformability of the compression zone or by reducing the neutral axis depth. The current state-of-the-art procedure evaluating the confinement effect prompts a consideration of the spaces between the transverse and longitudinal reinforcing bars, and a provision of tie bars. At the same time, consideration must also be given to the thickness of the walls. However, such considerations indicate that the confinement effect cannot be expected with the current practice of detailing wall ends in Korea. As an alternative, a comprehensive method for dimensioning boundary elements is proposed so that the entire section of a boundary element can stay within the compression zone when the full flexural strength of the wall is developed. In this comprehensive method, the once predominant code approach for determining the compression zone has been advanced by considering the rectangular stress block parameters varying with the extreme compression fiber strain. Moreover, the size of boundary elements can also be determined in relation to the architectural requirement.

• Steel and Composite Structures
• /
• v.22 no.2
• /
• pp.449-472
• /
• 2016

This paper studies the seismic behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) walls with encased cold-formed and thin-walled (CFTW) steel truss, which can be used as an alternative to the conventional RC walls or steel reinforced concrete (SRC) composite walls for high-rise buildings in high seismic regions. Seven one-fourth scaled RC wall specimens with encased CFTW steel truss were designed, manufactured and tested to failure under reversed cyclic lateral load and constant axial load. The test parameters were the axial load ratio, configuration and volumetric steel ratio of encased web brace. The behaviors of the test specimens, including damage formation, failure mode, hysteretic curves, stiffness degradation, ductility and energy dissipation, were examined. Test results indicate that the encased web braces can effectively improve the ductility and energy dissipation capacity of RC walls. The steel angles are more suitable to be used as the web brace than the latticed batten plates in enhancing the ductility and energy dissipation. Higher axial load ratio is beneficial to lateral load capacity, but can result in reduced ductility and energy dissipation capacity. A volumetric ratio about 0.25% of encased web brace is believed cost-effective in ensuring satisfactory seismic performance of RC walls. The axial load ratio should not exceed the maximum level, about 0.20 for the nominal value or about 0.50 for the design value. Numerical analyses were performed to predict the backbone curves of the specimens and calculation formula from the Chinese Code for Design of Composite Structures was used to predict the maximum lateral load capacity. The comparison shows good agreement between the test and predicted results.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
• /
• v.31 no.6
• /
• pp.315-329
• /
• 2018

Recently, RC transfer slab systems have been used widely to construct high-rise wall-type apartments for securing parking space or public space. However, it is problem that the design method and structural performance evaluation method developed for thin RC flat slab are still used in the design of the transfer slab whose thickness is very thick and therefore structural behavior is expected to be different from RC flat slab. Thus, for the rational design of the transfer slab, the ultimate shear behavior of the RC transfer slab system is required to be analyzed properly. Accordingly, in the present study, the two-way shear behavior of the transfer slab was analyzed using nonlinear FEM according to various design parameters such as thickness of the transfer slab, strength of concrete, shear span ratio, and reinforcement ratio. In addition, the two-way shear strength evaluations of RC transfer slab by the existing evaluation methods were verified by comparing those with the results of nonlinear FEM analysis.

• Computers and Concrete
• /
• v.27 no.5
• /
• pp.407-416
• /
• 2021

The checking stresses in the Chinese codes for reinforced concrete (RC) or prestressed concrete (PC) bridges are aimed for the thin-web beam, which cannot reflect the actual behavior of the modern structures. The incompleteness of the checking stresses could give rise to the deficiency in the design and calculation, and unable to reveal the reason of some common cracks in the structure. In this paper, the complete stress checklist for RC or PC girder bridges are listed, as well as the corresponding crack shapes. The expression of the complete checking stresses is proposed in details. Spatial Grid Model can reflect all the concerned stresses in the structure. Through the comparison of the calculation results from the spatial grid model and the solid model, it is seen that the spatial grid model can reflect load effects such as shear lag effect, thin-wall effect and local effect. The stresses obtained from the spatial grid model could help engineers to have a good understanding of the structural behavior. Meanwhile, the stress checklist provides the information for analyzing and solving the deficiency in the structure.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
• /
• v.16 no.2
• /
• pp.25-33
• /
• 2012

To examine the performance of a thin plate damper attached to coupling beam of bearing wall system, 5 specimens were designed with the variable parameters of the thickness and length of a thin steel plate, which was constructed and tested with a lateral load with up to a 5% drift ratio. The result was that the total amount of the energy dissipation of the specimen with the thin plate damper was greater than that of the standard RC specimen, and the plate buckling and plastic deformation could be seen in steel plate. The shorter the length of the damper, the higher was the lateral resistant force, but there was no apparent increase in the energy dissipation. By comparison of the experiments with the elastic buckling analysis, it was shown that the buckling force from the analysis could properly estimate the maximum value of the linear elastic range.

• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
• /
• 1999.04a
• /
• pp.269-274
• /
• 1999

Various method have been developed for mass concrete structures to reduce the temperature increase of concrete mass due to exothermic hydration reactions of concrete compounds and thereby to avoid thermal cracks. One of the methods widely acceptable for practical use is pipe cooling, in which cooling is achieved by circulating cold water through thin-wall steel pipes embedded in the concrete. A numerical simulation was performed to investigate the effectiveness of pipe cooling. A three-dimensional finite element method was proposed to analyse the transient three-dimensional heat transfer between the hardening concrete and the cooling water in pipe and to predict the stress development during the curing process. The effects of the cement type and content and the environment were taken into consideration by the heat generation rate and the boundary conditions, respectively. In order to test the validity of the numerical simulation, a model RC structure with pipe cooling was constructed and the time-dependent temperature and stress distributions within the structure as well as the variation of the temperature of cooling water along the pipe were measured. The results of the simulation agreed well the experimental measurements. The results of this study have important implications for the optimal design of the cooling pipe layout and for the estimation of thermal stress in order to eliminate thermal cracks.