Seismic Performance of Lightly Reinforced and Unconfined C-shaped Walls

Abstract

Poor seismic performance has been associated with lightly reinforced and unconfined non-rectangular reinforced concrete (RC) walls in recent earthquake events. The non-rectangular C-shaped RC wall is a popular construction choice for providing lateral stiffness to the building while also enclosing a service core, lifts, stairs or toilets. Given that the current provisions of AS 3600:2009 for the design of RC walls require very little (if any) confinement and allow low amounts of distributed longitudinal reinforcement to be used, an investigation is warranted focusing on the seismic performance of such structural elements. This paper presents an overview of some of the research results fro..