Effect of Ground Motion Sequence on Response of Squat Reinforced Concrete Shear Walls
Publication: Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 140, Issue 8
Abstract
Most industrial and nuclear facilities rely on reinforced concrete structural walls as their primary seismic lateral-force-resisting components. In nuclear facility structures, squat walls commonly have an aspect ratio lower than 0.5 and are designed to be thick for radiation shielding and blast and fire protection. The combination of a squat and thick wall geometry causes very high wall stiffness and strength. However, there is significant uncertainty about expected strengths, deformation capacities, and failure modes of these walls in earthquake load sequences, such as main-shock/aftershock combinations. Hybrid simulation is an effective experimental method to examine these issues: it enables simulation of the seismic response of squat and thick shear walls without the need to recreate the often very large mass associated with the remainder of the prototype structure. A hybrid simulation program utilized two shear wall specimens to investigate the variations of squat wall responses caused by different earthquake magnitude sequences. The results of these simulations indicated that different earthquake magnitude sequences do not have a significant effect on the force-deformation response and failure mode sequence of squat reinforced concrete shear walls.
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Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to Prof. Andrew Whittaker and Mr. Bismarck Luna at the State University of New York at Buffalo for their contribution and discussion of test data. NSF NEES-R Grant CMMI-0829978 provided the funding for this project. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the view of the NSF.
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© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Nov 18, 2012
Accepted: Jul 8, 2013
Published online: Jul 10, 2013
Discussion open until: Jul 12, 2014
Published in print: Aug 1, 2014
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