Research on seismic behavior of precast concrete shear wall with new steel plate-bolted horizontal connection

Abstract

A new type of steel plate-bolted horizontal connection for precast concrete shear wall is proposed in this paper. To investigate the seismic performance of the precast concrete shear wall with the new steel plate-bolted horizontal connection (SPB-PSW), quasi-static tests were conducted on two SPB-PSWs (PSW-1 and PSW-2 with axial compression ratios of 0.1 and 0.2, respectively), as well as one cast-in-place concrete shear wall (SW-1, with an axial compression ratio of 0.1). The test results indicate that the proposed new connection type can increase the horizontal bearing capacity of the shear walls by 5.3 %, enhance the energy dissipation capacity by over 14.8 %, and improve ductility by 32 %. For the three shear walls, the SW-1 suffered severe damage at the bottom and corner of the wall, whereas the damage location for the two SPB-PSWs moved upwards. The specimen PSW-2 exhibited a 6.9 % higher bearing capacity compared to the PSW-1, but its ductility decreased by 10.5 % and the energy dissipation was slightly smaller. Furthermore, the effects of shear span ratio and steel plates on the seismic performance of SPB-PSWs were studied using nonlinear finite element method (FEM). The FEM results indicate that increasing the strength and thickness of the connecting steel plate have little influence on the load-bearing capacity of SPB-PSWs. Compared to the SPB-PSW with a shear span ratio of 1.94, the horizontal bearing capacity of SPB-PSWs with ratios of 1.48 and 2.40 decreases by 24.0 % and increases by 26.1 %, respectively, indicating that the horizontal bearing capacity of the SPB-PSWs decreases when the shear span ratio increases.