Seismic Damage Assessment of Low Aspect Ratio Reinforced Concrete Shear Walls

Keywords: Earthquake engineering, shear critical, RC walls, I Crack, fragility, damage

Abstract: The goal of this report is to improve the professional community’s ability to collect, document and understand the effects of earthquake damage on low aspect ratio reinforced concrete shear walls. To this end, twelve large-scale specimens were designed, detailed and constructed at the Structural Engineering and Earthquake Simulation Laboratory at the University at Buffalo. The data collected from the reversed cyclic inelastic testing of these 12 walls enabled the development of a first-of-a-kind, non-contact automated tool for processing high-resolution images to obtain and process damage data, including lengths and widths of cracks. The database was also used to correlate observed damage with story drift at peak shear strength, which can be used to inform repair strategies and to update fragility functions in support of performance-based seismic assessment and design.