Analysis of Reinforced Concrete Shear Walls with Different End Configurations for Seismic Design

The Canterbury earthquake royal commission report highlighted that, despite being well-detailed, several reinforced concrete (RC) shear walls did not achieve their anticipated ductility capacities. In order to enhance the performance of such walls during future seismic events, the report recommended the use of concentrated and confined rebars at the wall toes coupled with high reinforcement ratios within the wall to initiate secondary cracks and extend the inelastic wall regions, thus minimizing the corresponding seismic demands. In this respect, the current study evaluates the seismic performance of RC walls with flanged and boundary element configurations compared with their typical rectangular counterparts, when different reinforcement ratios are incorporated. Specifically, the study presents a detailed analysis of six three-story half-scaled RC shear walls tested under quasi-static cyclic loading representing different seismic demands. The six walls were originally tested in two phases, where each phase had three different wall types (i.e., rectangular, flanged, and boundary element configurations). Walls in both phases had the same overall dimension and cross-section area; however, Phase II walls had 2.4 times the vertical reinforcement ratios used in Phase I walls. Following a summary of the experimental program and results, the current study presents the analytical results of the walls in terms of their load-strain relationships, curvature profiles, stiffness degradation trends, energy dissipation capacities, and equivalent viscous damping ratios. A comparison between the theoretical and experimental curvatures is also presented for the test walls at different drift levels. The results show that flanged and boundary element walls had low yield curvatures and high ultimate curvatures which resulted in enhancing their displacement ductility capacities. Flanged and boundary element walls also exhibited higher stiffness degradation rates when compared with their rectangular counterparts, leading to reduced seismic demands. Moreover, flanged and boundary element walls with high vertical reinforcement ratios (1.58%–1.63%) had higher energy dissipation capacities than their counterparts with low vertical reinforcement ratios (0.66%–0.69%). However, rectangular walls with low vertical reinforcement ratios (1.17%) showed higher ultimate curvature capacities than rectangular walls with high vertical reinforcement ratios (2.80%). Overall, the results demonstrate that future editions of relevant design standards (e.g., CSA A23.3 and ACI 318-19) should consider assigning different seismic design parameters (e.g., ultimate compressive strains, equivalent viscous damping ratios, and ductility-related modification factors) for RC shear walls based on their end configurations that can significantly alter the performance of such walls under seismic events.