An experimental study on the strengthening of non-ductile reinforced concrete frames via external shear wall

Abstract

The most common method for strengthening reinforced concrete frames that have insufficient earthquake resistance is the addition of reinforced concrete (RC) shear walls to the structural system. In recent years, the idea of constructing the shear walls not inside but outside the building was preferred and applied in order to decrease the cost of strengthening processes and without limiting the utilisation of the building. The most important problem of this application is that the architectural requirements of buildings can be hindered because of the shear walls constructed out of the axes; this can be solved by connecting the exterior shear walls to the existing frame using coupling beams and leaving a certain spacing between them. In this study, the contribution of the strengthening method called ‘external shear wall application via coupling beam’ on the behaviour of the existing frame under lateral loading conditions was investigated. For this purpose, one reference frame, one reference shear wall and two frames strengthened with external shear walls using coupling beams were produced and tested under reversed-cyclic lateral loading. The strengthened frames were constructed by connecting the external shear wall to the frame by making RC and steel coupling beam applications to determine the behaviour differences between them. In conclusion, the strengthening method made a considerable contribution to the frame that was insufficient against earthquake effects in terms of lateral load carrying capacity, rigidity and energy dissipation capacity.

Keywords:

• seismic behaviour
• cyclic loading
• strengthening
• external shear wall

Acknowledgements

This study was supported financially by Selcuk University BAP (project no: 2007-07101033). This study was prepared using the PhD thesis of Dr Murat Ozturk.