Reversed cyclic behavior of reinforced concrete shear walls with diagonal steel grids

Past reinforced concrete panel tests performed at the University of Houston have shown that reinforced concrete membrane elements under reversed cyclic loading have much greater ductility and energy dissipation when steel bars are provided in the direction of the principal tensile stress. This paper presents the experimental results of two low-rise and two mid-rise shear walls under reversed cyclic loading. The low-rise shear walls have a height-width ratio of 0.5, and the two mid-rise shear walls have a height-width ratio of 1.5. In critical regions, the wall reinforcements were designed in the orientation close to the principal stress direction. Furthermore, nonlinear finite element analyses of the tested walls were performed using the finite element analysis program Simulation of Reinforced Concrete Structures (SRCS), which was recently developed at the University of Houston. SRCS was developed by implementing the cyclic softened membrane model (CSMM) to the finite element framework OpenSees. The comparison showed good correlation between the predicted and experimental results of the four shear walls in terms of initial stiffness, ultimate strength, hysteretic loops, and energy dissipation, and the capability of SRCS to assess the cyclic behavior of shear walls with diagonal steel grids was validated.