Full scale experimental investigation on seismic structural walls

In historical earthquakes reinforced concrete structural walls showed to be very effective in preventing collapse and damage of buildings under strong and frequent events respectively. The large deformations imposed by strong earthquakes require for the walls large ductility capacity, which may be achieved by means large deformation in the plastic hinge at their base. The paper presents a full-scale experimental test which compares the performance of two analogous structural walls, proportioned for a five story building, reinforced with traditional and un-bonded reinforcement, respectively. A specific detailing solution to ensure shear dowel resistance at the wall base was adopted for each test wall, whose good performances were confirmed by the test results. The two walls reached large deformation (up to 2,5% drift) without collapse or shear sliding. Detailed measurements of the deformation in the critical region were collected to offer a comparison against the results of analytical and numerical modelling.