A New Rocking Concrete Shear Wall with Self-Centring Friction Connections

Abstract

In recent years, the intention towards developing and utilising low-damage systems in seismic resisting structures has been increasing amongst researchers and engineers. Replaceability and repairability after earthquakes even greater than Ultimate Limit State (ULS) design level, more reliability against aftershocks, and being immediately occupiable after severe earthquakes are some of the advantages of these systems. Different types of rocking concrete shear walls have been developed and used as low-damage structural systems. In this paper, a new low-damage rocking concrete shear wall has been introduced, developed and tested. Self-centring friction dampers are used as hold-down connections to control the rocking motion in the proposed system. Self-Centring Structural Connector (SSC) is used as tension-only hold-downs in the proposed system. First, the conceptual framework and the analytical procedure to design the system in detail and predict the performance are presented. Afterwards, an experimental program is designed and conducted to verify the developed analytical procedure. Later, a numerical investigation is carried out. The numerical outcome is also compared to the test results.