The behaviour of eccentric reinforced concrete slender walls

• Main Author: Chan, Teck Seng
• Other Authors: Li Bing
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Civil engineering::Structures and design
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/71012
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Singapore is located in the equatorial region which is surrounded by many neighbouring countries making it a relatively safe country being shield from natural disaster like tsunami and earthquakes. However, in recent years, it is reported that Singapore do felt tremors from earthquakes that occurred in our neighbouring countries and it may pose as a concern for Singapore as our infrastructure are not designed to sufficiently take on the impact from the earthquake. Since reinforced concrete (RC) wall is a commonly used structural element in construction and building, it is essential to understand the ability for the RC walls to take on the impact from the earthquakes. In recent years, studies of the effect of seismic activities on RC walls have been conducted with varying variables like shapes of the walls, direction of loadings as well as transverse reinforcement ratio. Since seismic waves may approach in different directions, it serve as a motivation for research to be conducted on RC walls with out of plane loading as it resemble the seismic wave impact. Particularly, some existing method and standard of practise underestimate the effective stiffness of these walls which calls for additional data to be available with regards to seismic behaviour of these walls. As such, experimental studies were conducted in this paper to study the structural behaviour of these walls systematically. The design parameters on structural behaviour of the RC walls that were investigated mainly the axial load levels and eccentricity. As such, a research study on two RC slender walls with aspect ratio, Hw/Lw of 2.26, and eccentricity of 10° was being carried out using experimental testing. An additional wall with no eccentricity was tested as a comparison on the eccentric effect on the RC slender wall. At the end of the study, the main findings would be summarized which would serve as a platform for further discussion by varying other parameters of the eccentric slender walls.