Out‐of‐plane shear‐axial failure in slender rectangular reinforced concrete walls

Abstract On 22 February 2011, one of the main structural walls of one of the tallest buildings in Christchurch, New Zealand (Grand Chancellor Hotel), had an extremely brittle and unusual failure that significantly damaged the building, severely compromising its structural stability. To this date, this peculiar failure mode has not yet been fully investigated and understood. Moreover, currently, it is not possible to identify and assess walls that are prone to this failure mode. Following recent findings based on experimental investigations, this failure mode was identified as out‐of‐plane shear‐axial failure. A Finite Element (FE) model was developed in DIANA to capture this failure mode, and through a numerical parametric study, the key parameters that contribute to the development of this failure mode in rectangular reinforced concrete (RC) walls were identified. Solid elements were used for the concrete material and embedded truss elements for the steel reinforcement. Bar buckling was not included in this investigation due to the limitation of DIANA in implementing the bar buckling and Menegotto‐Pinto models together, among which the latter was found to be more influential on the behaviour of RC walls investigated in this study. Based on the numerical and experimental studies conducted, an analytical method is proposed to: (1) identify rectangular walls prone to out‐of‐plane shear‐axial failure as a first‐level check for both design and assessment purposes; and (2) determine the out‐of‐plane drift capacity of rectangular walls prone to out‐of‐plane shear‐axial failure. Design recommendations are provided for rectangular walls prone to out‐of‐plane shear‐axial failure.