Experimental investigation of small-scale shear walls under lateral loads

Abstract

Shear walls are critical in designing of reinforced concrete structures against lateral loads. Although various research studies have been conducted on the design of reinforced concrete shear walls, these studies were limited by the laboratory capacity. This led to inability of testing walls with their full height for high to mid-rise shear walls. Fortunately, progress in specimen modeling techniques permitted performing scaled experimental studies. This paper presents 11 scaled down reinforced concrete shear walls—with 1/10 scale. The shear walls were cast to investigate various number of parameters. Shear walls have been tested under both monotonic and cyclic lateral loads. The scaled down tested specimens showed a behavior close to that of large-scale shear wall structural elements, not only in monotonic lateral loading, but also, in cyclic loading stiffness degradation and energy dissipation behavior. Experimental results were compared to that estimated by ACI sectional analysis as well as the ACI SP-36 and showed great similitude. The applicability to use the presented methodology is tested, in order to construct and test small-scale models of full-scale shear walls to allow for better understanding shear wall behavior under various loading conditions.