Lateral Load Behavior and Modeling of Shear-Dominant RC Walls for Performance-Based Design

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The goals of the research are to develop and validate new modeling approaches appropriate for combined gravity and earthquake loads for buildings that utilize solid reinforced concrete walls. In particular, the project will study the structural performance of reinforced concrete walls, which are commonly used in the low-, medium-, and high-rise building construction, to develop new computer/numerical models and building code design guidelines. To accomplish these goals, approximately ten large-scale models of typical wall configurations will be tested under simulated earthquake loading in the Structural/Earthquake Engineering Research Laboratory at UCLA. The walls will be instrumented with high-resolution sensors to measure loads, stresses, strains, and their deformations. Test observations and the collected sensor data will be used to understand how damage accumulates and ultimately leads to collapse. Project will provide methodology to predict damage under moderate to intense ground shaking. The changes to building codes for the performance-based design for both new and existing buildings with these walls will be proposed. The research results will enable engineers to design safer and more economical new buildings and to evaluate the performance of existing buildings to identify those posing significant hazard to the community in terms of expected casualties and economic losses. The new data, along with existing data from prior tests, will be compiled into a comprehensive database and archived into a community data repository to enable future research and development. The validated computer models will be developed in an open-source environment to facilitate further research and design studies. The results will be disseminated via an interactive web site and other web-based collaboration tools that encourage active participation. The research will provide advanced training to graduate and undergraduate students, incorporate active participation by high school interns, and include active participation from industry. Underrepresented groups will be recruited in the project using well established institutional partnerships