Experimental Study On Improving Seismic Performance Of Concrete Core Walls

The concrete core wall is widely used as the major anti-lateral force componentin high-rise and ultra-high-rise buildings because of its high anti-push rigidity. It is thefirst line of defense for seismic fortification and the key component of the structure.Therefore, the performance of the concrete core wall is directly related to theperformance of the entire structural system. However, the study of concrete core wallsis poor and fails to meet the needs of engineering application. it is of great theoreticaland practical significance to study the performance of concrete core walls. Based onthe previous studies, the main contents of this paper are as follows:Experimental study on the seismic performance of concrete core walls. In orderto improve the performance of the concrete core wall, the concept of confinedconcrete core wall and the second line of defense was proposed. Based on the forcecondition of concrete core walls, three large scaled reinforced concrete core wallmodels were built and tested under pseudo-static loadings to study the performance ofthe concrete core wall confined with reinforced frame and with both reinforced frameand steel skeleton. Their seismic behavior including the failure mechanism, hystereticbehavior, load-carrying capacity, ductility, stiffness degradation and energydissipation capacity was investigated and compared with each other. The test resultsshow that the measure of the confinement with reinforced frame and with bothreinforced frame and steel skeleton can improve the seismic behavior effectively,especially the latter performance of the concrete core wall.Based on the experiments and concrete finite element theory, the finite elementmethod of nonlinear analysis of reinforced concrete core wall models have beenestablished with ABAQUS. The corresponding non-linear analysis was carried outand the calculated results are consistent with the experimental results. The models canbe used for further study.Based on the experimental study and numerical simulation，two steel beam-concrete filled steel tubular column composite frame-reinforced concrete core wallstructure models referenced a practical engineering have been established to study theinfluence of the steel skeleton. The elasto-plastic time-history analysis results showthat the steel skeleton in concrete core wall can improve the load-carrying capacityand latter performance of the concrete core wall effectively.