Experimental studies on behavior of fully grouted reinforced-concrete masonry shear walls

An experimental study is conducted on fully grouted reinforced masonry shear walls (RMSWs) made from concrete blocks with a new configuration. Ten RMSWs are tested under reversed cyclic lateral load to investigate the influence of different reinforcements and applied axial stress values on their seismic behavior. The results show that flexural strength increases with the applied axial stress, and shear strength dominated by diagonal cracking increases with both the amount of horizontal reinforcement and applied axial stress. Yield displacement, ductility, and energy dissipation capability can be improved substantially by increasing the amount of horizontal reinforcement. The critical parameters for the walls are derived from the experiment: displacement ductility values corresponding to 15% strength degradation of the walls reach up to 2.6 and 4.5 in the shear and flexure failure modes, respectively; stiffness values of flexure- and shear-dominated walls rapidly degrade to 17%–19% and 48%–57% of initial stiffness at 0.50 Dmax (displacement at peak load). The experiment suggests that RMSWs could be assigned a higher damping ratio (～14%) for collapse prevention design and a lower damping value (～7%) for a fully operational limit state or serviceability limit state.

Predicting the Maximum Load of Reinforced-Concrete Pipe Columns

To simplify the calculation of the maximum load at which instability occurs for reinforced-concrete pipe columns under eccentric compression, a method based on the transformed cross-sectional area of the column and the concrete secant modulus of elasticity is proposed, consisting of an iterative process in which a sequence of lateral deflections is at column mid-height. The method assumes the deflected shape of the column as a half cosine wave. Analytical results were compared with experimental values obtained from 16 reinforced-concrete pipe columns. Using deflection at column mid-height recorded during the loading proc-ess, a typical load-deflection curve can be plotted and used to describe column behavior. The experimental results demonstrate that the failure of concrete columns is a process. The starting point is the cracking load point, when cracks are initiated in the concrete of the tensile zone of the critical cross-section of specimens. The maximum load point is the top of the failure process, and then the maximum bending moment occurs. The first point represents instability while the second one corresponds to the strength failure of the columns. The experimental results are close to the analytical values. The method is simple and can be used for stabil-ity analysis of reinforced-concrete pipe columns.