Enhancing ductility of non-seismically designed RC shear walls

Abstract

Experimental investigation is conducted on the seismic behaviour and ductility enhancement of non-seismically designed reinforced concrete shear walls with various configurations of confinement links. Large-scale squat shear wall specimens are tested under reversed cyclic loads. Emphasis is placed on the effects of the boundary confinement and configuration of confinement links on the improvement of seismic performance and ductility. It has been shown that modification in reinforcement detailing specifications for non-seismic design should be made in order to improve seismic behaviour and enhance ductility capacity, as well as the energy dissipation ability, of reinforced concrete shear walls with non-seismic design for fulfilling the requirements of low to moderate seismicity. This can be achieved by adopting the specific reinforcement detailing, which is proposed based on the results of the experimental study. The proposed reinforcement details include only minor modifications to the detailing techniques of currently practiced non-seismic design, which can lead to an important improvement of ductile response behaviour of the shear walls, but do not result in significant increases in construction cost and difficulty.