Displacement-Based Design of Slender Reinforced Concrete Structural Walls—Experimental Verification

Abstract

Application of displacement-based design for slender structural walls results in predictions for the wall normal strain gradient derived from estimating the wall neutral axis depth and maximum compressive strain at the wall boundary, for a given top displacement. Based on this strain distribution, requirements for special boundary element transverse reinforcement are assessed. A simplified application of displacement-based design was incorporated into ACI 318-99 to evaluate detailing requirements at wall boundaries. The results of experimental studies of moderate-scale, slender wall specimens with rectangular-shaped and T-shaped cross sections are used to verify results predicted using displacement-based design. Detailing at the boundaries of the wall specimens, which were subjected to monotonically increasing reversed cyclic lateral loads and constant axial load of approximately 0.10Agfc′, were varied to assess behavior for a variety of conditions. Findings indicate good agreement between predicted and measured strain (curvature) distributions for a range of drift levels, verifying that displacement-based design is both a powerful and flexible tool for assessing wall detailing requirements.