Research on the out-of-plane mechanical performance of double-face superposed shear walls with different horizontal connections

Abstract

The horizontal connections play a critical role in resisting gravity and lateral loads in precast concrete sandwich panel shear wall structures and it's important to fully understand their behavior under various loading conditions. This study aims to investigate the out-of-plane mechanical behavior of double-face superposed shear walls with horizontal connections featuring different lap-spliced rebar connection configurations. Three full-scale double-face superposed shear walls were tested to investigate their out-of-plane structural performance with that of a cast-in-place shear wall in terms of failure modes, cracking patterns, strain analysis, deformation analysis, load-displacement curves, and force transfer mechanism of lap-spliced rebar connections. The double-face superposed shear walls displayed and maintained a fully composite manner until failure, and the examined three different horizontal connections can allow effective force transfer between the shear walls and the main structure. The final crack distribution and failure mode of double-face superposed shear walls were almost similar to that of the cast-in-place shear wall all exhibiting obvious out-of-plane bending failure characteristics. While the initial stiffness, ultimate bearing capacity and displacement ductility capacity of double-face superposed shear walls were higher. A mathematical model predicting the ultimate bearing capacity of the double-face superposed shear wall under out-of-plane horizontal loads was proposed.