Strength of Wall-Slab Junction with New Form of Shear Reinforcement in a Laterally Loaded Tall Shear Wall Building

Abstract

Very high concentration of flexural, shear and torsional stresses occurs at the wall-slab junctions in a laterally loaded tall building consisting of planar walls and coupling slabs. Due to this concentration of stresses and their interaction, there are great chances of failure to occur at the junction. Also the flexural stresses are not uniformly distributed and have the highest intensity near the periphery of inner walls but are reduced drastically as we move away from the wall-slab junction. Numerous attempts have been made to strengthen the wall-slab junction by using various types of shear reinforcement to ensure that shear failure should not occur. Various methods including fibre reinforcement consisting of twins of twisted steel couplets have already been used. This paper describes a new method of placing 2 inch wide flange I-sections at appropriate locations to improve the shear strength of the wall-slab junctions. Based on systematic research, a new procedure has also been developed to assess the strength of wall-slab junction using the new reinforcement method. Test results showed that a substantial increase, up to 57%, in the shear strength of specimens was obtained by using the new method of shear reinforcement in a laterally loaded tall building.