Title: Behavior and Design of Lightly Reinforced Concrete Walls

Author(s): Lowes

Publication: Web Session

Volume: ws_S22_Lowes.pdf

Issue:

Appears on pages(s):

Keywords:

DOI:

Date: 3/28/2022

Abstract:
The presentation summarizes the findings of a simulation-based investigation of the behavior and design of low-rise, lightly reinforced concrete walls, including lightly reinforced walls employing concrete with low steel fiber ratios. Lightly reinforced concrete walls, including insulated concrete formwork (ICF) walls, are used commonly for residential and low-rise construction. ICF construction can be particularly advantageous because the insulating formwork provides a substantially higher level of insulation than traditional construction. A primary cost of low-rise reinforced concrete construction is placement of reinforcing steel, and in regions of low to moderate seismicity, ACI 318 Code requirements for minimum reinforcement, rather than design loads, typically determine the volume of reinforcement that is required. The results of this study suggest that there is the potential for reducing reinforcement requirements and for using fiber reinforced concrete (FRC) with low reinforcement ratios for low rise walls, without impairing performance, in regions of low to moderate seismicity. The investigation comprised five phases: 1) a literature review which establish a study funded by PCA and conducted by Roller (1996) as the primary reference, 2) validation of a continuum-type finite element modeling approach using LS-Dyna for simulating the response of lightly reinforced concrete components, 3) a simulation-based investigation of the impact of reinforcement configuration, including the spacing of horizontal and vertical reinforcement as well as the use of two versus one layer of reinforcement, on the response of walls exhibiting flexure-controlled response to out-of-plane loading, 4) calibration of the LS-Dyna concrete constitutive model to simulate the behavior of FRC with low steel fiber ratios, and a 5) simulation-based investigation of the out-of-plane flexural response of FRC walls with low steel fiber ratios and low reinforcing steel ratios.