Out-of-Plane Response of In-Plane-Loaded Ductile Structural Walls: State-of-the-Art and Classification of the Observed Mechanisms
Farhad Dashti, Rajesh P. Dhakal, Stefano Pampanin
Abstract
Following observations of out-of-plane instability in slender ductile structural walls in some recent earthquakes, this mode of wall failure has been and is being investigated by several research groups. Analytical, numerical and experimental investigations have been conducted to study this failure mechanism as well as its controlling parameters. Both singly reinforced and doubly reinforced concrete walls have been studied under unidirectional and bidirectional loading. A simplified approach making use of concrete columns representing boundary zones of rectangular walls has also been used to reduce the computational and experimental costs of the research programs. This paper provides a state-of-the-art on the research conducted on this failure mechanism and the corresponding findings, with the main focus on the walls with rectangular cross-sections and under unidirectional loading. The out-of-plane response of walls is classified into five different modes and the likely forms of force-displacement and out-of-plane displacement history plots corresponding to each mode are discussed.