Experimental Study and Numerical Simulation of Partially Prefabricated Laminated Composite RC Walls

Abstract

This paper presents the low-cyclic reversed tests and numerical simulation on partially prefabricated laminated composite reinforced concrete (RC) walls. The specimens include 4 typical composite walls without openings, 4 with openings, and 1 common cast-in-place RC wall. The structural behaviours including failure pattern, lateral load-top drift relationship and the in-plane horizontal load carrying capacity of the composite RC walls were compared with the common cast-in-place RC walls through the experiments. Then the finite element software ABAQUS was employed to simulate the experiment scenarios. The simulation results are consistent with the experimental results. After that, further simulation was conducted on the composite walls and the common cast-in-place wall under different axial forces. Experimental and numerical study indicates that there is no obvious difference in horizontal load carrying capacity and failure pattern between the composite walls and the common cast-in-place walls under the test axial ratios, but the composite walls are more vulnerable to failure under high axial force compared with the cast-in-place wall. Though they have many advantages in rapid construction, especially in reconstruction of the earthquake-hit areas, the laminated composite walls are not suggested to apply under high axial ratio conditions.