Experimental investigations on the seismic performance and ductility enhancement of large-scale reinforced concrete low-rise shear walls with non-seismic design are conducted. Emphases of the study is given to the seismic behaviour and ductility enhancement of shear walls with different aspect ratio and reinforcement details, which are designed without seismic considerations, as practiced in regions of low probability of seismic occurrence. Experimental results show that displacement ductility capacity of 2.5 to 3 may generally be inherent with the current non-seismic reinforcement detailing....[ Read more ]

Experimental investigations on the seismic performance and ductility enhancement of large-scale reinforced concrete low-rise shear walls with non-seismic design are conducted. Emphases of the study is given to the seismic behaviour and ductility enhancement of shear walls with different aspect ratio and reinforcement details, which are designed without seismic considerations, as practiced in regions of low probability of seismic occurrence. Experimental results show that displacement ductility capacity of 2.5 to 3 may generally be inherent with the current non-seismic reinforcement detailing.

By correlating the available ductility capacity with the required ductility demand, it indicates that an ordinary low-rise shear-wall building structure with non-seismic design and detailing may not possess the ductility to adequately respond to an unexpected low-to-moderate earthquake, then not to sufficiently satisfy the ductility demand for shear-wall building structures in regions of low-to-moderate seismicity, including Hong Kong, Singapore, the UK, Central America and many other regions in the world.

Based on the observed behaviour and dominated failure modes of the non-seismically detailed shear walls, the improved detailing techniques focusing on practical design for low-to-moderate seismicity, are proposed and experimentally evaluated. Promising results indicate that ductility factors of 4 to 5 can be achieved by simply modifying the current design practice without significantly increasing construction cost and difficulty.

Design recommendations based on the experimental study are presented for non-seismically designed shear walls in order to improve seismic performance. The suggestions may serve as reference to the practising engineers for low-to-moderate seismic design of reinforced concrete shear walls.