| The purpose of this study was to investigate the hysteretic response of reinforced-concrete (R/C) structural walls that are susceptible to shear failure after flexural yielding. The investigation was divided into an experimental and an analytical phase. There were three main objectives in the experimental phase: to study the potential discrepancies between static and dynamic wall response, to examine the influence of the web reinforcement ratio on the overall response and modes of failure, and to investigate the sensitivity of shear-dominated wall response to the sequence of earthquake testing. The analytical phase comprised two parts: the compilation of a database of static tests of structural walls, and the development of a hysteresis model for the nonlinear response history analysis of R/C wall elements.;Six moderate rise, three-story, isolated, R/C structural wall specimens were constructed and tested under either static load reversals or dynamic earthquake simulations. The primary experimental variables were the type of loading, the web reinforcement ratio, and the sequence of earthquake testing. The web reinforcement ratio was either 0.27% or 0.5%. The two static tests were controlled by imposing a first-story displacement history while the story lateral loads were kept identical. A typical static test consisted of three cycles at each of 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 percent first-story drift. Two different input base motions were used for the dynamic tests. The first motion was a representation of the S00E component of the 1940 El Centro earthquake with the time scale compressed by a factor of five. The second input motion was a modified version of the first. Each of the four walls tested dynamically was subjected to a series of either three or five earthquake simulations. The amplitude of the motion was increased in successive simulations.;The proposed nonlinear hysteresis models are capable of reproducing the key aspects of the observed static wall response. Separate models were developed to represent the behavior in flexure and shear. A trilinear backbone curve that defines the response under monotonic loading is defined for each component of deformation, and two separate sets of hysteresis rules are proposed to define the response under cyclic loading. |
