Cyclic response of reinforced concrete walls with different anchorage details: Experimental investigation

Previous tests of structural walls have routinely used continuous reinforcement extending from the foundation to the top of the specimen. This detailing is consistently different from that of multistory walls in the field, which incorporate splices in the wall longitudinal reinforcement above the wall-foundation interface. As a result, the performance of walls incorporating continuous reinforcement in the laboratory may not be representative of walls in the field that use lap splices or mechanical couplers near the wall base. This paper investigates lateral load behavior of three nominally identical structural walls with continuous reinforcement, lap splices, and mechanical couplers in the plastic hinge region, and quantifies the differences in their responses using force-displacement response, lateral deformation components, and energy dissipation estimated using equivalent viscous damping.