A displacement-based design method for medium-rise reinforced concrete walls

In displacement-based design methods some demand considerations, starting from the first mode of vibration, are usually made. However, some authors have called the attention on the importance of taking the higher modes into account, due to their influence in the distribution and demand of both, moments and shears along the vertical elements, with significant effects. In this work, the method presented allows to consider, in a practical way, the effect of the higher modes on the seismic response of a structure. The proposal to achieve it, is a simplified model of Three Degree of-Fredom developed from a mass concentration of four points equally distant along the building height. This method corresponds to an iterative process, in which the analysis and design procedures are carried out simultaneously, thus, avoiding considerations or suppositions on resistance and ductility values. This method has been applied to the structural walls of a 15-storey building. The results obtained show the efficiency of the method in terms of the proposed objectives achievement and the fast converging of the iterative process involved. The effect of the higher modes is extremely noticeable in the distribution of shear stresses and the use of an initial pre-dimensioning involving the reinforcement, allows consistency between the analysis and the structural design

Cyclic tensile-compressive tests on thin concrete boundary elements with a single layer of reinforcement prone to out-of-plane instability

The growing need for residential housing in Latin American countries has led to the construction of reinforced concrete buildings with wall thicknesses as low as 8–10 cm. Such walls have typically only a single layer of vertical rebars and are therefore particularly susceptible to out-of-plane failure. In order to investigate the response of the corresponding wall boundary elements, twelve reinforced concrete members with a single layer of vertical rebars were tested under tension–compression cycles. The objective was to gain insight into the parameters governing wall instability and out-of-plane failure, namely the thickness, reinforcement ratio, and eccentricity of the longitudinal rebars with respect to the member axis. This paper summarises the results of the test program, where the specimens' response is analysed also at the global and local levels. The results show that the crack pattern has an important influence on the out-of-plane behaviour and the conditions leading to out-of-plane failure are described. Furthermore, the differences between members with a single layer of vertical rebars and members with two layers are discussed. The influence of the parameters considered in the experimental program is addressed, showing that sections with small thickness and large reinforcement content are more prone to out-of-plane failures. Finally, predictions given by existing models are compared to the new experimental data. The entire data set is publicly available. © 2017 Springer Science+Business Media B.V

Response of mid-rise reinforced concrete frame buildings to the 2017 Puebla earthquake

The response of mid-rise reinforced concrete (RC) buildings in Mexico City after the 2017 Puebla Earthquake is assessed through combined field and computational investigation. The Mw 7.1 earthquake damaged more than 500 buildings where most of them are classified as mid-rise RC frames with infill walls. A multinational team from Colombia, Mexico, and the United States was rapidly deployed within a week of the occurrence of the event to investigate the structural and nonstructural damage levels of over 60 RC buildings with 2 12 stories. The results of the study confirmed that older mid-rise structures with limited ductility capacity may have been shaken past their capacity. To elucidate the widespread damage in mid-rise RC framed structures, the post-earthquake reconnaissance effort is complemented with inelastic modeling and simulation of several representative RC framing systems with and without masonry infill walls. It was confirmed that the addition of non-isolated masonry infills significantly impacts the ductility capacity and increases the potential for a soft-story mechanism formation in RC frames originally analyzed and designed to be bare systems. © 2019, Earthquake Engineering Research Institut