Study on confined end-regions of RC walls under monotonic and cyclic loadings

Abstract

A study was conducted to clarify the influence of reinforcement detailing, slenderness and loading type on the capacity, damages and failure modes of confined boundary regions of reinforced concrete (RC) cantilever walls. It was found that the tensile strain prior to compressive strain affected the performance of thin wall boundaries and may lead to different failure modes compared to compression load only. It was also found that dense transverse reinforcement detailing in thin confined boundaries did not improve their performance. Some design and detailing practices were evaluated to determine their accuracy in preventing global buckling and bar buckling under extreme lateral loading. Numerical model that take into account reinforcing bar buckling was proposed to simulate the behaviour of specimens tested under monotonic condition. The model could simulate the observed response with good accuracy.