Ensayos cuasi-estáticos cíclicos de muros delgados de concreto reforzado en edificios colombianos

The use of thin reinforced concrete walls (thickness of 8 to 12 cm) in Latin America has become a popular building construction practice in the last two decades. Several existing studies indicate that the inelastic deformation capacity could be limited and the level of damage could be severe even at low levels of plastic rotation. There is a lack of experimental data and practically no field post-earthquake observations related to the behavior of this construction system; therefore, a research effort was recently launched to gather further information about the geometry, materials, reinforcement detailing and response of these thin RC walls. The main variables of interest indentified during the early stage of the study were the slenderness ratio, axial load ratio, reinforcement detailing, and cross section geometry. Based on such study, several prototypes have been defined for experimental testing. This paper presents the preliminary results of a T-shaped single layer reinforced concrete wall with a shear span ratio of 2. The reinforcement comprises ductile conventional steel bars, with not additional steel at the web boundary. A reversed cyclic load pattern was applied to the specimen, keeping an axial load ratio of 5% based on the specified concrete compressive strength. The results obtained indicated a limited capacity of inelastic deformation, reaching an average plastic rotation of 0.75% before flexural traction failure, followed by concrete crushing during a posterior cycle.