Performance of Precast Shear Wall Connections Under Monotonic and Cyclic Loading: A State-of-the-Art Review

Abstract

Industrialized building system (IBS) is the term used to represent the concept of prefabrication, and it has been widely used worldwide. In the last few decades, all the reinforced concrete structures in India were constructed adopting the cast-in-situ construction. Many problems were encountered during the cast-in-situ construction, such as incompletion of work at specified time due to weather conditions, design methods, lack of workmanship, congestion due to traffic, and curing time. These issues can be highly reduced by choosing precast construction as each structural element is manufactured in the factory and only erection is done at the site. This process has a considerable reduction in construction time and ensures the quality of the elements. Tall buildings are the need of the hour for affordable housing projects in India. In tall buildings, the strength and stiffness are generally provided by the wall system, which comprises shear walls. The shear wall system should be effective with wind loads and earthquake loads, if not it will lead to catastrophic failure. Connections play an important role in the lateral load resistance of the precast wall system because it is the weakest link in the precast wall system. The biggest challenge is the behaviour and possible failure of the connections due to severe lateral loads against earthquake or wind excitations. A brief review of various horizontal and vertical connections of shear walls and their behaviour under various loading conditions are discussed.