Open Collections

Experimental study to investigate compression failures of thin concrete walls

University of British Columbia

The experimental research was completed to investigate the strain capacity of thin concrete walls. 45 wall elements that were either 24 in. (610 mm) or 36 in. (914 mm) high had 5.5 in. (140 mm),6 in. (152 mm), 8 in. (203 mm) or 10 in. (254 mm) thickness and various reinforcement arrangements. The concrete wall elements were subjected to concentric axial compression load. The strain capacity of the wall elements was measured. In many of the tests the strain was kept uniform and in some of the testing no effort was made to keep strain equable. The test results and observations indicated that the strain capacity of thin concrete walls could be as low as 0.0015. Low strain capacity was observed when the slender specimens (with height-to-thickness ratio of 4.5) did not contain lateral confinement. In slender specimens that had straight horizontal reinforcement and no lateral ties, concrete cover tended to separate. Moreover, diagonal cracks were formed through the location of lateral reinforcement. In some cases the cracks coalesced at the middle section of the specimen into a larger crack and split the specimen in the middle. An analytical study was conducted to investigate how the compression strain capacity could influence the axial load capacity of bearing walls. Maximum compression axial load was calculated for various bearing wall lengths of 2 to 60 ft while keeping the strain demand on the bearing walls within certain limits.

Text

2012-10-17

Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/43465

Civil Engineering

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/