Experimental Investigation on Stress Redistribution and Load-Transfer Paths of Shear Walls with Openings

The stress design method is gaining more and more attention for the design of two-dimensional and three-dimensional reinforced concrete members. Shear walls, a common type of RC members used in civil engineering, are typically under a complex stress state. The stress design method could be categorized into the elastic stress design method and the elastic-plastic stress design method. When RC members receive certain damage, such as concrete cracking, their stress is significantly redistributed and their initial elastic load-transfer paths vary accordingly. The elastic stress design method is simple and practical with some limitations, and the elastic-plastic stress design method easily causes tedious calculations. In this paper, two types of RC shear wall specimens that had the location of an opening in the middle bottom and the center region, respectively, were used for this study. For each type, two specimens were designed by using the separated-elements model genetic evolutionary structural optimization (GESO) method and elastic stress method, respectively. All specimens were subjected to a constant vertical load and an incremental lateral load until their failure, and the cracks and the strains were recorded during testing. Besides, three shear wall models, with or without openings, with regular reinforcements under the same condition are also analyzed by means of finite-element analysis (FEA) for contrast. The influence of the stress redistribution and the variation of the load-transfer paths in the RC shear walls were explored according to the test results and the simulation results, and some design suggestions were presented on the reinforcement layout of RC members under a complex stress state.