Experimental campaign of rehabilitated reinforced concrete walls with boundary elements

Abstract

Following the 2010 earthquake in Chile and the 2010/2011 Canterbury earthquakes in New Zealand, a significant number of reinforced concrete (RC) wall buildings with different damage levels were demolished or rehabilitated. The rehabilitations techniques used in RC buildings in Chile aimed to increase the strength and deformation capacity of RC walls. Although several researchers have tested the seismic behavior of different rehabilitations techniques, the experimental evidence of rehabilitated RC walls is limited. This paper summarizes the experimental campaign of two rehabilitated RC walls with unconfined boundary elements. The original walls were tested in a previous study and were rehabilitated with addition of special boundary elements. The shear span-to-depth ratios of the walls were 1.75 and 2.5. The test results showed that the rehabilitation techniques changed the failure mode of the walls; the peak lateral strengths of rehabilitated walls were larger than that of the original walls; and the deformation capacity of the rehabilitated walls were not consistently larger than that of the original walls.