Cyclic behaviour of precast shear walls with damage-concentrated connectors

The precast shear wall has been widely applied in the area with high seismic intensity, owing to the advantage of excellent lateral resistance and convenient construction. However, serious damage or failure of precast shear wall always occurs due to the insufficient strength or ductility of connections, leading to the structural failure and difficulties in post-earthquake resilience. In this paper, a new precast shear wall with damage-concentrated connectors was proposed based on the idea of damage control, and the seismic behavior was investigated experimentally. The failure process, load-displacement curves, ductility behaviour, degradation characteristics and energy dissipation behaviour were studied. Results showed that the proposed precast shear wall exhibited desired structural integrality, and it developed adequate stiffness and bearing capacity. The deformation capacity and the energy dissipation capacity were also enhanced since the failure process and the stress distribution were improved by the damage-concentrated connectors. No strength degradation for the precast shear wall occurred before the drift approached 1/50, while the ultimate drift ratio and energy dissipation capacity of proposed precast shear were about 2 times and 4.4–5.2 times of those for the monolithic shear wall, respectively. The damage was controlled in the connectors and more than 87 % of the total energy consumption was dissipated by damage-concentrated connectors. The proposed precast shear walls failed with the fracture at the damage-concentrated connectors, while the concrete shear wall remained in good condition with slight crack development. The utilization of damage-concentrated elements could avoid premature damage to precast concrete and improve the seismic resilience.