Seismic behavior of T-shaped steel reinforced high strength concrete short-limb shear walls under low cyclic reversed loading

This paper presents an experimental study of six steel reinforced high strength concrete T-shaped short-limb shear walls configured with T-shaped steel truss under low cyclic reversed loading. Considering different categories of ratios of wall limb height to thickness, shear/span ratios, axial compression ratios and stirrup reinforcement ratios were selected to investigate the seismic behavior (strength, stiffness, energy dissipation capacity, ductility and deformation characteristics) of all the specimens. Two different failure modes were observed during the tests, including the flexural-shear failure for specimens with large shear/span ratio and the shear-diagonal compressive failure for specimens with small shear/span ratio. On the basis of requirement of Chinese seismic code, the deformation performance for all the specimens could not meet the level of .,three? fortification goals. Recommendations for improving the structural deformation capacity of T-shaped steel reinforced high strength concrete short-limb shear wall were proposed. Based on the experimental observations, the mechanical analysis models for concrete cracking strength and shear strength were derived using the equivalence principle and superposition theory, respectively. As a result, the proposed method in this paper was verified by the test results, and the experimental results agreed well with the proposed model.