STRUCTURAL BEHAVIOR OF PRECAST HIGH STRENGTH REINFORCED CONCRETE VIERENDEEL TRUSS WALLS: A NUMERICAL APPROACH

Abstract

Reinforced concrete (RC) walls have been widely used in different types of civil engineering projects. Therefore, their behaviour under several kinds of loading is of utmost importance. In this study, the main objective is to investigate the behaviour of RC Vierendeel walls under the applied loads by employing numerical analyses for the studied walls. Several assumptions are adopted in these analyses to simulate the actual behaviour of Vierendeel walls, which were experimentally studied in previous investigations. The numerical results showed that the simulated numerical behaviour has a very good agreement with the experimental results of the tested models. Statically, this agreement is validated and verified in terms of the mean and standard deviation values. Therefore, the proposed numerical models and assumptions are the suitable ones to simulate the structural behaviour of these walls under the applied conditions. The structural behaviour is presented in terms of load capacity, crack pattern, deflection, and mode of failure. The results show that the reactive powder concrete (RPC) models have more resistance under the applied load in terms of deflection, cracks, and ductility index than the models of normal strength concrete (NSC). Also, the openings are the main reason for the diagonal cracking at the corners of the RC walls. The deflection in all models is a single curvature. The mode of failure for all models is shear.