Minimum Flexural Reinforcement in Reinforced Concrete Walls

Abstract eng:
Current design practices for reinforced concrete (RC) flexural members to resist bending moments promote the use of "under-reinforced" sections. It is believed that sections with less reinforcement are more ductile and have better deformation capacity. The availability of stronger steel (requiring smaller amounts of reinforcement), failures in buildings with walls with small reinforcement ratios, and laboratory evidence showing that less reinforcement does not always lead to more deformability suggest that the deformation capacity of elements with small reinforcement ratios (ranging from 0.07% to 0.25%) needs to be reexamined. Tests of four RC walls were conducted to investigate the minimum amount of conventional (yield stress ≤ 60 ksi (414 MPa)) or high-strength (yield stress ≥ 100 ksi (690 MPa)) longitudinal reinforcement needed so that bar fracture does not limit drift capacity to an intolerable value. The walls were 8 in. (203 mm) thick and 40 in. (1016 mm) long. Their aspect ratio was 1.8. They were tested monotonically up to failure and had no axial load. All test walls failed because of fracture of longitudinal reinforcement at drift ratios less than 1%.

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