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14 Assessment of the boundary region stability of special RC walls

Abstract:

In the aftermath of the Chile 2010 and New Zealand 2011 earthquakes, the out-of-plane buckling mechanism of reinforced concrete structural walls (RCSW) was reported for the first time in real structures. However, this failure mode had been studied since 1980s through experimental observations that constituted the basis of phenomenological models created to prevent and assess buckling instability of RCSW. Based on these models, a less conservative approach is proposed that was validated through experimental and analytical studies conducted on prisms simulating special boundary regions of planar RCSW. The main parameters con- sidered were the influence of different loading paths acting simultaneously, the longitudinal reinforcement ratio, and the thickness of the wall. The results showed that the onset of out-of-plane buckling instability of planar RCSW is mainly governed by the longitudinal steel content, the in-plane loading demands, and the wall thickness.