Experimental and numerical modelling studies of slender reinforced concrete walls with single-layer reinforcement in Peru

Abstract

The deficit in affordable residential construction in Lima has generated the construction of several mid to high-rise buildings using the structural system of Slender Reinforced Concrete (RC) Walls. In Peru, this system is known as ‘walls of limited ductility’ and their main characteristics are a fast construction time and an affordable price. Due to the expected non-ductile behaviour, Peruvian RC slender wall buildings follow the same seismic design criteria as traditional RC wall buildings but with a smaller reduction factor of elastic seismic forces and minor permissible story displacement drift. However, there is limited experience of the seismic response of such buildings in severe earthquakes and seismic design criteria have been obtained from just a few experimental tests. This work presents an experimental program of cyclic in-plane testing, developed at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP) to obtain more knowledge about the lateral behaviour of typical Peruvian slender walls. According to quasi-static tests, the slender walls reached a maximum story drift of 1.27% after damage occurred, including diagonal tension, diagonal compression, sliding shear, concrete crushing, and buckling of the vertical reinforcement. Experimental results for the slender RC walls were computed to obtain the Damage States, Equivalent Lateral Stiffness (Keff), Ductility (μ), Equivalent Damping Ratio (ξeq) and Bending/Shear/Sliding deformations. In this work, a calibration process on numerical models was developed using OpenSees software. This work shows that slender RC walls in Peru show the typical hysteretic response of structural walls until a maximum drift of 1.27%, despite their deficiencies in slenderness, squat geometry, and the absence of confinement zones.