Cycle behaviour of precast composite wall with different ecological filled blocks

Abstract

This article aims at experimentally investigating a cycle behaviour of a new lateral force-resisting structural system, that is, precast composite walls with ecological filled blocks. For this purpose, a total of five low cyclic loading tests were conducted for the 1:2-scaled precast composite wall specimens with five different kinds of ecological filled blocks, namely, the wheat straw fibre raw soil–based block, the recycled expanded polystyrene lightweight concrete block, the wheat straw fibre cement–based block, the autoclaved aerated concrete block and the cotton straw block. In the test, the failure patterns, hysteretic loops, characteristic points, skeleton curves, ductility and relative deformation, stiffness degradation and energy dissipation capacity of the tested specimens were obtained and further analysed. The test results show that (1) the failure modes and mechanisms of the tested specimens are primarily affected by the strength of the filled blocks and the connection performance of the concrete ribbed grids; (2) the filled blocks, ribbed grids and the concealed frame can work cooperatively and interact and they play roles in the three stages of elastic, elastic–plastic, and ultimate destruction in turn; (3) the compressive strength, crack resistance, modulus of elasticity of filled blocks and bonding capacity with the ribbed grids are the main factors affecting the characteristic point, displacement ductility, stiffness degradation and other seismic performance index of the precast composite wall; (4) the five wall specimens have different energy dissipation capacities with the increase of displacement and also have the strong ability to resist collapse, which reflect the precast composite walls’ good behaviour in terms of earthquake resistance.