Seismic behavior and simplified hysteretic model of precast concrete wall panels with bolted connections under cyclic loading

Abstract

Bolted prefabricated concrete wall panel structures are considered to be of great advantage in the current construction industry as they allow efficient recycling or direct replacement of aging components for structural renewal and repair. However, the parts of bolted connectors still have many problems such as complex construction and high positioning accuracy requirements. Furthermore, comparative studies on different bolted connections have been limited to date. This paper proposes a simplified tensile-bolt connection and a shear bolt-steel plate connection for low-rise wall-based structures in earthquake-prone zones, which can adapt to the fast-easy and reliable installation manners on construction sites. Three tension-bolted specimens and three shear-bolted specimens were tested under quasi-static cyclic loading. The seismic performances studied include failure modes, hysteretic behaviors, deformation, energy dissipation capacity, stiffness degradation, and steel strain distributions. The results indicated that both types of bolted specimens meet the seismic safety of low-rise buildings. By analyzing the typical skeleton curve and hysteretic loop of the specimens, based on a linear regression fitting analysis, the characteristic points of the proposed skeleton model curves were proposed which could evaluate the restoring characteristics of the curves well. A simplified restoring force model was proposed which has a high evaluation accuracy. The research results can give references to the further application of bolt-connected fabricated wall panel structures.