Study on the accuracy of practical functions for R/C wall by a developed database of experimental test results

Abstract

Pushover analysis is widely used in modern practical structural design to evaluate collapse modes and member forces at the safety limit state. All members, including shear walls, need to be modeled properly to assure the accuracy of pushover analysis. As such, functions to predict initial stiffness, crack strength, yield or ultimate strength, stiffness degrading ratio to the yielding point, ultimate deformation, and ultimate shear strength must be acceptably accurate. While several theoretical, semi-theoretical, and empirical functions have been proposed and are commonly used in practice, the accuracies of these functions have not been verified comprehensively. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transportation and Tourism and the Building Research Institute launched a project in Japan from 2012 to 2015 to develop a comprehensive database of experimental data from 507 reinforced concrete wall experiments conducted between 1975 to 2013 to confirm the accuracy of the functions. In this paper, the comparisons between values predicted using the functions against experimental results from the database are presented. It was found that (i) the predicted initial stiffness tends to be higher than that from experimental tests, (ii) the predicted ultimate flexural and shear strengths were generally smaller than those from experimental tests, and its accuracy appears to be dependent on the presence of boundary columns and the existence of openings, and (iii) the predicted deformation corresponding to yield and at ultimate shear strength tends to be smaller than those from experimental tests.