Experimental Testing of Limited Ductile Reinforced Concrete Building Cores

Abstract eng:
This paper presents the preliminary results of a recent experimental study testing the lateral cyclic displacement capacity of limited ductile reinforced concrete (RC) walls and building cores. In regions of lower seismicity, such as Australia, the majority of low, mid and high-rise buildings are constructed using RC walls as the predominant lateral load resisting system and typically fall into the category of limited ductile RC construction. The walls are generally configured to form box shaped configurations surrounding lift cores and stairwells. While considerable research efforts have been devoted to testing rectangular RC walls, in both regions of low and high seismicity, very few tests have been performed on geometric, i.e. box shaped, building cores. As such the experimental study predominately consisted of near full scale cast in-situ and precast RC building cores. The test program also included one full scale rectangular wall. The tests were performed using the stateof-the-art MAST hybrid system at Swinburne University of Technology, which can apply full six degree of freedom loading to a test specimen. Using the MAST system the specimens were tested as highly slender flexure controlled cantilever elements with a shear span ratio of 6.5.

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