Seismic performance of slender RC U-shaped walls with a single-layer of reinforcement

Abstract

Reinforced concrete walls are commonly used to resist the lateral loading induced by wind and earthquake actions. While most walls include two vertical reinforcement layers, some regions of the world construct slender, non-rectangular concrete walls with a single vertical layer of reinforcement. The seismic performance of such elements is largely unknown given the paucity of experimental research. This paper presents the results of two slender reinforced concrete U-shaped walls tested at the Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics Laboratory (EESD Lab), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. Both wall specimens, designed similar to construction practice in Col..