See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/338643341

Response of reinforced concrete shear walls with various detailing of

reinforcement

Conference Paper · September 2019

CITATIONS READS

0 342

5 authors, including:

Manicka Dhanasekar Tatheer Zahra

Queensland University of Technology Queensland University of Technology
179 PUBLICATIONS   2,130 CITATIONS    29 PUBLICATIONS   99 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Mohammad Asad Julian Thamboo

Queensland University of Technology South Eastern University of Sri Lanka
6 PUBLICATIONS   9 CITATIONS    27 PUBLICATIONS   164 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Optimal Design of Raised Pavement Across Rail Track View project

Studies of localised damages of the concrete pedestals supporting bridge girder bearings View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Tatheer Zahra on 21 March 2020.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

This is the author’s version of a work that was submitted/accepted for pub-
lication in the following source:

Dhanasekar, Manicka, Zahra, Tatheer, Asad, Mohammad, Noor-E-Khuda,

Sarkar, Thamboo, Julian, & Askarinejad, Hossein
(2019)
Response of reinforced concrete shear walls with various detailing of rein-
forcement. In
Concrete 2019, 8-11 September 2019, Sydney, N.S.W.

This file was downloaded from: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/135546/

c 2019 The Author(s)

Notice: Changes introduced as a result of publishing processes such as

copy-editing and formatting may not be reflected in this document. For a
definitive version of this work, please refer to the published source:
Response of Reinforced Concrete Shear Walls with Various Detailing of
Reinforcement
Manicka Dhanasekar1, Tatheer Zahra2, Mohammad Asad3, Sarkar Noor-E-Khuda4, Julian Thamboo5,
and Hossein Askarinejad6
1Professor of Infrastructure Engineering, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
2 Lecturer in Civil Engineering, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
3 Associate Lecturer in Civil Engineering, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
4 Lecturer in Civil Engineering, CQ University Australia
5 Lecturer in Civil Engineering, South Eastern University, Sri Lanka
6 Senior Lecturer in Civil Engineering, Ara Institute of Canterbury, New Zealand

Abstract: Shear walls are critical lateral load resisting elements in buildings. These walls exhibit
complex failure modes as they are subject to a combination of vertical compression and in-plane shear
loads and are vulnerable to shear dominated failure depending up on their aspect ratio, vertical load to
compressive strength ratio and reinforcement ratio. As the compression capacity of reinforced concrete
shear walls is achieved with no regard to the steel area, it is not uncommon to have a combination of
very high strength concrete and minimum required percentage of steel in the walls with relatively high
compression and low in-plane shear load. Walls of such design exhibited brittle failure in the 2011
Canterbury earthquake, which prompted the AS3600 (2018) revision to make significant changes to the
ductility and detailing provisions of structural walls. In this research shear walls with a range of
compressive strength of concrete, percentages and detailing (single layer - double layer) of steel have
been analysed through a non-linear finite element modelling method. It has been discovered that the
shear walls with single layer and double layer reinforcement do not differ significantly in either their
lateral in-plane load capacity nor in their ductility. Walls made from very high compressive strength
(with associated higher tensile strength) concretes are shown to exhibit nonductile failure mode.

Keywords: RC Shear walls; Single layer reinforced; Double layer reinforced; In-plane shear strength;
Ductility

1 Introduction
Reinforced concrete shear walls (RCSW) are key lateral load resisting elements in concrete buildings;
adequate capacity and ductility of these walls are central to the safety of the shear wall dominated
buildings. Compressive strength of concrete, thickness of walls and the percentage of vertical and
horizontal reinforcement play key roles to the capacity and ductility of the RCSWs; precompression on
these walls also affect the capacity and ductility. AS3600 (2018) disregards contribution of vertical
reinforcement to the resistance of compression loads; as such, RCSWs in the basement of tall buildings
may be designed with very high strength concrete. This scenario has two adverse consequences: (1)
RCSWs with very high strength concrete can resist seismic lateral loads in low hazard large population
centres (for example, Brisbane) with minimal steel reinforcement and (2) the associated high tensile
strength of concrete delays formation of tensile cracks in heel until the low percentage steel is strained
close to yield. Such walls could fail suddenly after the formation of the first crack due to large elongation
of the steel bars in the heel. Through a series of finite element study, Henry (2013) narrated these
features in detail. With a view to avoiding such brittle failure of RCSWs, the design standards increase
the minimum percentage of steel; whilst such provisions could delay heel cracking dominant failure,
that basic mode might not be eliminated unless the designers provide substantially larger percentage
of steel reinforcement, which only will occur if there is a substantial seismic demand as the steel bars
are not considered effective in compression design.
Menegon et al (2017) argued the need for stringent design of RCSWs based on the observations in the
2011 Christchurch earthquake, which is a 6.2 magnitude intraplate type (believed to be the aftershock
of the 2010 Canterbury earthquake) with characteristics similar to that of the Australian intraplate
earthquakes. Their argument stemmed from the well-established principles of the low seismic zones
will suffer disproportionately larger peak ground acceleration compared to high-seismic zones when a
design return period (typically 500 years) increase to a maximum considered earthquake event (typically
2500-year return period). The current Australian concrete structures design standard AS3600 (2018)
has responded to their argument and increased the stringency in the design provisions of structural
RCSWs, notable one being relegating the RCSWs containing reinforcement only at mid thickness (or
single layer reinforced walls) to non-ductile elastic design class (i.e., ductility of such walls be taken as
1.0). Interestingly, the revised Australian masonry structures standard, also released in 2018 (AS3700,
2018), has kept the ductility value for the fully grouted and reinforced masonry walls as 2.0 albeit
containing single layer reinforcing steel, perhaps on the understanding that the mortar joints crack more
uniformly across the whole body of the reinforced masonry wall unlike the crack localisation typical of
low steel RCSWs.
Minimum steel for ductile behaviour RCSWs has been examined by Hoult (2017) using VecTor2
program and concluded that for ductile response, walls must have a minimum of 0.94% vertical steel
and 0.40% horizontal steel. It was shown that reinforcements concentrated at boundaries performed
better than the walls that have got steel uniformly spaced. Minimum steel of 0.8% was shown sufficient
to provide the required level of ductility in (Greifenhagen, and Lestuzzi, 2005; Dazio et al 2009; Li et al
2015). Lu et al (2016) have shown the current minimum reinforcement percentage provisions are not
adequate in terms of crack distribution in the serviceability limit state conditions. Slender RCSWs with
less than 0.5% vertical and horizontal reinforcement percentages and single central layer reinforcement
arrangement has reported out-of-plane instability due to post-yield buckling of reinforcing bars during
the application of the in-plane loading in controlled lab testing (Hube et al 2014; Carrillo et al 2015).
Reinforced masonry shear walls that are conventionally reinforced with single layer steel at mid
thickness of walls, however, did not show such out-of-plane instability under in-plane loading actions
(Haider and Dhanasekar 2004; Zhao and Wang 2017). Banting and El- Dakhakhni (2012) have tested
five RMSWs with various configurations of toe and heel confinement and found that boundary elements
were more effective for higher ductile response including well distributed cracks over approximately
three-quarter height of wall. They used 0.59% vertical reinforcement and 0.30% horizontal
reinforcement. Xu et al (2018) have experimentally tested four reinforced masonry shear walls
(interestingly they used 0.29% vertical reinforcement and 0.6% horizontal reinforcement) – two cast
insitu and two prefabricated and found the walls possessed high ductility. Robazza et al (2018)
specifically designed reinforced masonry shear walls that violated the slenderness limit of 20 specified
in the Canadian masonry design code (CSA S304-14, 2014) and examined their potential toe buckling;
none reported prior to peak load.
Despite of numerous studies on RCSWs, the actual influence of the reinforcement amount and detailing
on the local and global behaviours are not fully understood; particularly the differences in the
performance of single and double layer reinforced RCSWs are not comprehensively studied in the past.
The main aim of this study is, therefore, to investigate the in-plane shear capacity and deformation
behaviour of single layer and double layer RCSWs – initially through numerical studies followed by
experimental validation; this paper reports the numerical study on the response of RCSWs to lateral
loading. A detail finite element (FE) modelling technique for single layer and double layer RCSWs was
developed and verified using the recent experimental results in the literature. The verified FE modelling
technique was then used to further analyse the influence of concrete grade, vertical load level and
reinforcement amount/detailing on the shear capacity and deformation behaviour of single layer and
double layer RCSWs. This paper describes the FE modelling method and validation of the predicted
results in Section 2; parametric studies and discussion of results in Section 3 followed by conclusions.

2 Finite Element Modelling and Validation

Primarily two techniques can be used to numerically model RCSW (1) structural level modelling and (2)
material level modelling. In the structural level modelling technique (also referred to as macro
modelling), the geometry of the RCSW is idealised using smeared elements formulated incorporating
concrete and steel characteristics into a unique material. Variation to this technique includes treating
concrete as smeared element and embedding discrete steel bars with perfect bond assumption. The
material level modelling (also referred to as micro modelling) technique treats concrete and steel as
separate elements including bond between steel and concrete. The structural level modelling is
generally not used to predict local bond failure and is limited to the overall load – deformation response,
failure mode, ultimate load, ductility, energy dissipation and steel stresses. The material level modelling
technique is most suitable for local behavioural analysis including bond-slip and bar buckling in RCSW.
Recently Dashti et al (2017) reported structural level results from FE analysis of shear walls tested to
understand the response of shear walls typically found in the buildings damaged in the 2011
Christchurch earthquake using DIANA finite element program.
This paper deals with structural level modelling of RCSW where the concrete is represented using thick
shell element and the steel bars are represented as embedded reinforcing elements with no bond-slip
(or perfectly bonded); inherently, the model eliminates prediction of bar buckling. The model was
developed using a newly introduced continuum shell element (SC8R) in ABAQUS (2017) which
represents the thickness of walls and flanges (if any) using the nodal coordinates unlike the
conventional shell elements where thickness is input separately. The shell normal is defined using a
right-hand screw rule from bottom surface to the top surface; Fig 1 shows the surface 1-2-3-4 as bottom
and 5-6-7-8 as top. With only three translational degrees of freedom, SC8R resembles a solid ‘brick’
element; however, its kinematic and constitutive behaviour is similar to conventional shell elements.
Further, this continuum shell element allows defining layers within the solid (continuum) which is useful
to specify the constitutive properties of the cover and core concretes.

Figure 1: Continuum shell element.

Concrete damage plasticity material model available in ABAQUS was used to represent the constitutive
behaviour of concrete. The damage model assumes mainly two failure mechanisms that are tensile
cracking and compressive crushing of concrete. The elastic-plastic behaviour was defined as the
constitutive material model for the reinforcement. The constitutive properties of a typical 40MPa
concrete and a normal ductile steel reinforcing bar is shown in Fig. 2.

(b) Concrete Tension – (c) Steel Tensile Stress-

(a) Concrete Compression Strain Response
Damage Evolution
– Damage Evolution
Figure 2: Constitutive Properties of Concrete and Steel.
Fig. 2 shows the constitutive properties of core concrete of 40MPa grade; the corresponding cover
concrete was assumed to possess 70% of the core concrete strength both in compression and tension.
The steel property was taken from Li et al (2015) and Blandon et al (2018) – as their experimental
results were used to validate the formulated FE model. The experimental study from Li et al (2015) was
taken to model and verify the behaviour of double layer RCSW and the testing result of Blandon et al
(2018) was used to numerically verify the behaviour of single layer RCSW. The provided reinforcement
amount, geometrical and material properties of experimental RCSWs are given in Table 1.
Table 1. Experimental data used for numerical model verification.
Properties Li et al (2015) Blandon et al (2018)
Wall reference LW1 W4
L (m) × H (m) × t (mm) 2.0 × 2.5 × 120 2.5 × 2.4 × 100
Aspect Ratio H/L 1.25 0.96
Single/ Double Layer Steel Double Single
Compressive Strength of Concrete, (MPa) 40.2 39.1
Yield/ Ultimate strengths of reinforcement bar (MPa) 427 (497) 563 (691)
Vertical web reinforcement ratio/ (%) 0.5 0.27
Horizontal web reinforcement ratio/ (%) 0.5 0.27
Axial load to Compressive Strength Ratio 0 0.05
Axial Load (kN) 0 470
Core and cover concrete properties were assigned to the distinct layers of the wall. The details of
modelling of the double layer RCSW taken from Li et al (2015) is shown in Fig. 3.
 Figure 3: FE modelling of double flanged double layer reinforced shear wall.
Fig. 3 shows the idealisation of the double flanged double layer reinforced shear wall tested by Li et al
(2015). Blandon et al (2018) tested single flanged single layer reinforced concrete shear walls (details
in Table 1); their wall was also modelled similarly in ABAQUS. The predicted failure modes of the two
walls are presented in Fig. 4. Shear stress contours presented in Fig. 4 exhibit diagonal cracking in both
walls at a drift level of 0.4%. The load-drift responses of the two walls and their corresponding
experimental data are presented in Fig. 5. Good predictions are obtained for both walls.

Figure 4: Failure patterns of RCSWs (a) Li et al (2015) and (b) Blandon et al (2018).

Figure 5. Experimental and numerical Load vs. drift responses.

Although the two tests were performed at two different countries (double flanged wall in Singapore and
the single flanged wall at Mexico) some five years apart, it is remarkable to note that the peak load and
failure mode of the two walls were not significantly different owing to their aspect ratios being similar;
both exhibited shear dominant failure. Although the single flange wall was considered susceptible to
out-of-plane buckling, authors reported none detected based on their video imaging technique.
Concerns for post-peak out-of-plane buckling triggering potential collapse of wall thus seems too
conservative and disregard the redundancy in walls unlike the columns as part of framed structures
could suffer a major collapse.
The deformability of the double layer reinforced, double flanged wall is better than that of the single
flanged single layer wall. To examine the effect of the single layer steel versus double layer wall, the
double flanged wall (Li et al, 2015) was reanalysed with the steel positioned at the mid thickness of wall
in a single layer; the area of steel reinforcing bars (vertical and horizontal) were kept unchanged. All
other parameters were also kept unchanged. The result of the re-analysis is plotted with the original
analysis and the experimental result in Fig.6.

Figure 6. Effect of single vs double layer reinforcement in a double flanged RCSW.

The double flanged wall, irrespective of the type of reinforcement has shown similar level of ductility;
the minor reduction in the lateral load capacity perhaps is associated with the loss of core confinement.
This result has prompted to examine the effect of single versus double layer reinforcement detailing for
various levels of steel ratios, imposed vertical load and compressive strength of concrete. The ensuing
section provides the results of these parametric studies.

3 Parametric study and Discussions

The validated FE model was used to examine the effect of changes to some selected design parameters
to the lateral load capacity and ductility of RCSWs. The following parameters were considered:

(i) Compressive strength of concrete ( f ) : 25MPa, 32 MPa, 40MPa and 50MPa

c
'

(ii) Percentage of steel (  ) : 0.25%, 0.50% and 1.0% (vertical to horizontal steel ratio = 1.0)

(iii) Vertical compression load to compressive strength ratio  p = N  : 0, 0.05 and 0.2
 Ltw f c' 
(iv) Detailing of steel reinforcement: single layer and double layer

These combinations resulted in ( 72 = 4  3  3  2 ) analyses. As establishing mesh was very time

consuming, it was decided to use the double flanged wall tested by Li et al (2015); all 72 analyses were,
therefore, carried out using the same wall. All models were run for 1.3% drift (although the lightly loaded
walls were showing no rapid loss of lateral load resistance), where the analyses were terminated to
minimise computational time and post processing time. In some instances, walls failed prior to attaining
1.3% drift – especially walls containing 50MPa concrete.
The lateral load – lateral displacement curves of two extreme cases (one with the lowest compressive
strength, lowest % of steel with zero Precompression; and the other for the highest compressive
strength, largest % of steel and the largest Precompression) for both the single and double layer
RCSWs are shown in Fig. 7.

(a) 25MPa; 0.25%; 0 – single layer (b) 25MPa; 0.25%; 0 – double layer

(c) 50MPa; 1%; 0.2 – single layer (d) 50MPa; 1%; 0.2 – double layer

Figure 7. Predicted Load vs. drift responses of RCSWs.

It can be seen that when the RCSW is made from low strength concrete, irrespective of single- or
double-layer detailing, the wall exhibits high level of deformability sustaining the peak load for well over
1% drift that is considered useable in multi-storied buildings. When the compressive strength is
increased (doubled in this instant to 50MPa) and subject to high vertical precompression, the capacity
of the wall increased by 150% (from approximately 300kN to 750kN). In real world, walls subject to
high gravity loading (precompression) are likely to be designed with high strength concrete as steel is
considered ineffective to improve compression capacity of walls. Even when these 50MPa concrete
walls are detailed with 1% vertical and horizontal steel reinforcing bars, the walls lost their peak load
sustaining capability (or, deformability) with their drift well below 1%. Detailing reinforcing bars in double
layer has improved the deformability to approximately 0.9%, but still below the 1% level. These results
are concerning as the walls contain double flange; a combination of high compressive strength concrete
and high precompression is detrimental to ductility of the walls. Delayed cracking due to higher tensile
strength of the 50MPa concretes is also a reason for this brittle response.
The load-displacement curves were transformed into bilinear form using the well-known equivalent area
method to identify the yield displacement; the ultimate displacement was taken corresponding to 20%
drop in peak load. Ductility was determined as the ratio of the ultimate displacement to the yield
displacement.
The peak load of each of the 72 analyses and the ductility determined from the load-displacement
curves of the 72 analyses are plotted against the compressive strength of concrete used in the walls in
Fig. 8. Six sub figures each containing results of 12 analyses are include in Fig. 8. Each sub figure
contains family of percentage of reinforcing bars and precompression levels and contain the peak load
and ductility values.
It can be seen that in all cases, the peak load increased with the increase in compressive strength of
concrete. The precompression has also significantly increased the peak load of walls irrespective of the
compressive strength of concrete. The steel ratio has only marginal effect on the peak load of the walls.
Ductility decreased with the increase in compressive strength of concrete in walls. Ductility was also
adversely affected by the presence of larger precompression. A combination of higher compressive
strength and higher precompression is lethal to ductility. For example, wall with 25MPa concrete,
double layer steel and no precompression exhibited very high level of ductility of approximately 12,
whilst walls with 50MPa concrete under a precompression load equal to 20% of their compression
capacity only attained ductility of approximately 2.0 even when double layer steel was used.

Single steel layer Double steel layers

Figure 8. Responses of RCSWs to key parameters.

4 Conclusion
This paper has presented finite element modelling of single- and double-layer steel reinforced concrete
shear walls. Such a study was prompted by the recent changes to the shear wall design in the Australian
concrete structures standard. The standard AS3600 (2018) has discouraged design of shear walls with
single layer reinforcement detailing by forcing such walls as nonductile with a ductility of 1.0. The
stringency in these provisions is based on evidences of collapse of single layer reinforced shear walls
in the 2011 Christchurch earthquake that was believed to be an intraplate aftershock of the 2010
Canterbury earthquake. As Australia is susceptible to intraplate earthquakes, the standards committee
 justified such stringencies. On completely unrelated matter, as the standard does not allow designers
to use steel reinforcement to resist gravity loading, most likely walls in tall building basements be
designed using high strength concrete. The analyses presented in this paper has shown that the
combination of high strength concrete and high levels of precompression are lethal to the deformability
of the RCSWs. It is shown that for very high level of precompression (equal to 20% of compression
capacity of walls) a 25MPa wall exhibits ductility of 4.0 whilst a 50MPa wall exhibits ductility of 2.0 even
though the steel bars are arranged in double layer form.
It was shown that higher the compressive strength of concrete used in wall and higher the
precompression, higher was the in-plane shear load capacity of RCSWs. Trends in ductility was shown
inversely proportional to the trends in peak load capacity.
Although detailing walls with double layer is a good practice that provides additional confinement to the
core concrete, the benefit of the detailing to the ductility of the wall considered in this paper is not clear.
Analyses presented in this paper utilised a double flanged squat shear wall dominated by shear mode
of failure. Further work is ongoing whether such conclusions will hold for walls with no flanges through
experimental and finite element studies.

5 References

1. Standards Australia, “AS 3600-2018: Concrete Structures Standard”, 2018, Sydney.

2. Henry, R.S., “Assessment of the minimum vertical reinforcement limits for RC walls”, Proc.
NZSEE Conference, 2013, paper 135, pp1-12.
3. Menagon, S.J., Wilson, J.L. et al., “RC Walls in Australia: Seismic Design and Detailing to
AS1170.4 and AS3600”, Australian Journal of Structural Engineering, 2017,
Doi.org/10.1080/13287982.2017.1410309.
4. Standards Australia, “AS3700-2018: Masonry Structures Standard”, 2018, Sydney.
5. Hoult, R., “Minimum Longitudinal Reinforcement Requirements for Boundary Elements of
Limited Ductile Walls for AS 3600”, Electronic J of Structural Engineering, 2017, pp 43-52.
6. Greifenhagen, C. and Lestuzzi P., “Static cyclic tests on lightly reinforced concrete shear walls”,
Engineering Structures, 27(11), 2005, pp 1703-1712.
7. Dazio, A., Beyer, K. et al., “Quasi-static cyclic tests and plastic hinge analysis of RC structural
walls”, Engineering Structures, 31(7), 2009, pp 1556–71.
8. Li, B., Pan, Z. et al., “Experimental evaluation of seismic performance of squat RC structural
walls with limited ductility reinforcing details” J. Earthquake Eng., 19(2), 2015, pp 313–331.
9. Lu ,Y., Henry, R S. et al., “Cyclic Testing of Reinforced Concrete Walls with Distributed
Minimum Vertical Reinforcement”, ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering, 143(5), 2017.
10. Carrillo, J., Lizarazo, J.M. et al., “Effect of lightweight and low-strength concrete on seismic
performance of thin lightly-reinforced shear walls”, Engg Structures, 93, 2015, pp 61-69.
11. Hube, MA., Marihuen, AN. et al., “Seismic behaviour of slender reinforced concrete walls”,
Engineering Structures, 80, 2014, pp 377–88.
12. Haider, W., and Dhanasekar, M., “Experimental study of monotonically loaded wide spaced
reinforced masonry walls”, Australasian J of Structural Engineering, 5(2), 2004, pp 101-118.
13. Zhao, Y., Wang, F.L., “Experimental studies on behavior of fully grouted reinforced-concrete
masonry shear walls”, Earthquake Engg and Vibration, 14, 2015, pp 743–757.
14. Banting, BR., and El-Dakhakhni, WW., “Force and Displacement-Based Seismic Performance
Parameters for RMSWs with Boundary Elements”, ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering,
138(12), 2012, pp 1477-1491.
15. Xu, W., Yang, X. et al., “Experimental Investigation on the Seismic Behavior of Newly-
Developed Precast RCBM Shear Walls”, Journal of Applied Science, 8, 1071, 2018.
16. Robazza, BR., Brzev, S. et al., “Out-of-Plane Behavior of Slender RMSWs under In-Plane
Loading: Experimental Investigation”, ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering, 144(3), 2018.
17. Canadian Standards Association, “CSA S304-14: Masonry design of buildings”, 2014.
18. Dashti, F., Dhakal, RP. et al., “Numerical Modeling of Rectangular Reinforced Concrete
Structural Walls”, ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering, 143(6), 2017.
19. ABAQUS, Finite element software documentation, Dassault Systèmes, Simulia 2017, RI, USA.
20. Blandon, CA., Arteta, CA. et al., “Response of thin lightly-reinforced concrete walls under cyclic
loading”, Engineering Structures,176, 2018, pp 175–187.

View publication stats