Seismic behavior and design of strutted diaphragm walls in sand

Abstract

In this paper, the seismic behavior and design of strutted diaphragm wall are evaluated in a dry cohesionless soil. The method of ACI 318 code for designing wall and also Peck's method under AISC regularization for designing steel strut have been discussed. The results indicated that conventional methods of wall and strut design have an acceptable performance in static condition, but when it is subjected to seismic loads, these methods return the values of bending moment and shear force of wall up to 2.8 times and the axial stress in strut up to 11 times larger than allowable limits.