Plastic Hinge Length for Lightly Reinforced C-Shaped Concrete Walls

Abstract

This research investigates the equivalent plastic hinge length of reinforced concrete C-shaped walls with reinforcement detailing typically found in low-to-moderate seismic regions. Reinforced concrete walls in these regions commonly have low amounts of longitudinal reinforcement and unconfined boundary regions, which have been shown to perform poorly in recent earthquake events. A series of state-of-the-art finite element analyses are undertaken to find the longitudinal strain distributions of low-rise, mid-rise, and high-rise C-shaped walls. The results of the equivalent plastic hinge lengths from the numerical investigation are shown to compare poorly to the predictions from some of the e..