Fire Resistance and Post-fire Seismic Behavior of High Strength Concrete Shear Walls

Abstract

In this study, both fire tests and low-frequency cyclic loading tests after fire were conducted on three conventional high strength concrete (HSC) shear walls and a superimposed HSC shear wall with precast recycled aggregate concrete (RAC) panels. The RAC in this paper was made with recycled concrete aggregate. When specimens suffered the fire exposure on one side for 45 min, 90 min, and 135 min separately, spalling of concrete, temperature distribution and deformation of specimens were investigated as indicators of fire response. When specimens were subjected to cyclic load after fire, hysteresis curves were obtained, based on which the secant stiffness degradation and energy dissipation capacity of walls were analyzed. The results indicated that HSC would suffer severe spalling during the fire and that fire response of the superimposed wall including spalling was smaller than that of conventional walls. Using RAC panel as a thermal barrier was found to be effective to alleviate spalling, as it reduced more than 60% of spalling of HSC compared with bare walls. Based on the seismic tests results, the fire exposure deteriorated the load bearing capacity, lateral stiffness and energy dissipation capacity of walls, whereas the application of RAC panels improved the load bearing capacity by about 10% even when the superimposed wall was exposed to the fire for a long time.