Eleventh U.S.

National Conference on Earthquake Engineering

Integrating Science, Engineering & Policy
June 25-29, 2018
Los Angeles, California

DRIFT CAPACITY PREDICTION OF RC

STRUCTURAL WALLS WITH SPECIAL
BOUNDARY ELEMENTS
Saman A. Abdullah1 and John W. Wallace2

ABSTRACT

Performance of reinforced concrete (RC) walls in recent laboratory tests and in recent strong
earthquakes has revealed that thin wall boundaries are susceptible to concrete crushing, rebar
buckling, and lateral instability, raising concerns that there might be deficiencies in current
design codes. To address these issues, a dataset of 164 fully- or nearly-code compliant walls was
assembled and studied. Results revealed that displacement capacity of code-compliant walls is
primarily a function of ratio of wall length-to-compression zone width ( lw b ), ratio of wall
neutral axis depth-to-width of compression zone ( c b ), ratio of average shear stress demand
normalized by the square root of the concrete compressive strength ( v max f 'c ), and whether
overlapping hoops as opposed to a perimeter hoop with supplemental legs of crossties are used
for boundary transverse reinforcement. Other detailing parameters, such the quantity and spacing
of boundary transverse reinforcement provided, degree of lateral support for boundary
longitudinal bars, and the spacing between laterally supported boundary longitudinal bars, did
not have a significant impact on wall lateral deformation capacity for the ranges of the
parameters considered. Based on these observations, an expression is developed to predict wall
lateral drift capacity with low coefficient of variation.

1
PhD Candidate, University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, 2541
Boelter Hall, Los Angeles, California, CA 90095-1593 (email: [email protected])
2
Professor, University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, 5731 Boelter
2
Professor, University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, 5731 Boelter
Hall, Los Angeles, California, 90095-1593

Abdullah SA, Wallace JW Drift capacity prediction of RC structural walls with special boundary elements.
Proceedings of the 11th National Conference in Earthquake Engineering, Earthquake Engineering Research
Institute, Los Angeles, CA. 2018.
Drift Capacity Prediction of RC Structural Walls With Special Boundary
Elements

Saman A. Abdullah1 and John W. Wallace2

ABSTRACT

Performance of reinforced concrete (RC) walls in recent laboratory tests and in recent strong
earthquakes has revealed that thin wall boundaries are susceptible to concrete crushing, rebar
buckling, and lateral instability, raising concerns that there might be deficiencies in current design
codes. To address these issues, a dataset of 164 fully- or nearly-code compliant walls was
assembled and studied. Results revealed that displacement capacity of code-compliant walls is
primarily a function of ratio of wall length-to-compression zone width ( l w b ), ratio of wall
neutral axis depth-to-width of compression zone ( c b ), ratio of average shear stress demand
normalized by the square root of the concrete compressive strength ( v f ' ), and whether
max c

overlapping hoops as opposed to a perimeter hoop with supplemental legs of crossties are used for
boundary transverse reinforcement. Other detailing parameters, such the quantity and spacing of
boundary transverse reinforcement provided, degree of lateral support for boundary longitudinal
bars, and the spacing between laterally supported boundary longitudinal bars, did not have a
significant impact on wall lateral deformation capacity for the ranges of the parameters
considered. Based on these observations, an expression is developed to predict wall lateral drift
capacity with low coefficient of variation.

Introduction

Reinforced concrete (RC) structural walls are commonly used as lateral force-resisting elements
in tall and moderately tall buildings because they provide substantial lateral strength and
stiffness, and are assumed to provide the needed nonlinear deformation capacity if detailed
according to ACI 318. Major updates to ACI 318 design provisions for slender walls occurred in
1983, 1999, and 2014 [1,2,3]. In 1983, an extreme compression fiber stress limit of 0.2 f 'c under
bending and axial stress was introduced to determine the need for special boundary element
transverse reinforcement [4,5,6], whereas in 1999, an alternative to the stress-based limit, a
displacement-based approach [7,8,9], was introduced to evaluate the need for special boundary
element transverse reinforcement. In 2014, more stringent detailing requirements, based on
observations from recent strong earthquakes and recent laboratory tests, were introduced for

1
PhD Candidate, University of California, Los Angeles, Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering, 2541 Boelter
Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095 (email: [email protected])
2
Professor, University of California, Los Angeles, Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering, 5731 Boelter Hall,
Los Angeles, CA, 90095

Abdullah SA, Wallace JW. Drift capacity prediction of RC structural walls with special boundary elements.
Proceedings of the 11th National Conference in Earthquake Engineering, Earthquake Engineering Research
Institute, Los Angeles, CA. 2018.
slender ( hw lw ≥ 2.0), thin walls, and a limit on wall slenderness and a minimum wall thickness
for sections that are not tension-controlled were added. Even with the 2014 updates, the
underlying premise of the ACI 318-14[3] approach to design and detailing of Special Structural
Walls is that walls satisfying the provisions of §18.10.6.2 through §18.10.6.4 possess adequate
ductility to exceed the expected drift demands. However, recent research [10] has demonstrated
that this underlying premise may not always be correct.
This paper provides a brief overview of factors that impact the lateral drift capacity of walls with
Special Boundary Elements (SBE) and then presents an expression to predict mean wall drift
capacity with low coefficient of variation (COV). To a accomplish these objectives, a recently
developed robust and well-detailed database (UCLA-RCWalls) of RC wall tests [11,12], which
includes detailed information of more than 1000 wall tests from more than 200 experimental
programs reported in the literature, was filtered to identify a dataset of 164 code-compliant, or
nearly code-compliant, walls that satisfy the following requirements:

(a) Quasi-static, reversed cyclic loading, 14 §18.10.6.4) area of boundary transverse

(b) Concrete compressive strength, fc' ≥ 3 ksi, reinforcement, Ash, provided Ash,required ≥ 0.7,
(c) Ratio tensile-to-yield strength of boundary (j) Boundary bar slenderness ratio, s db ≤
longitudinal reinforcement, fu f y ≥1.2, 8.0,
(d) Rectangular width of compression face of (k) Centerline distance between laterally
member, b, supported boundary longitudinal bars,
(e) Wall web thickness, t w ≥ 3.5 in., hx, between 1.0 in. and 9.0 in.
(l) Tests were excluded if walls exhibited
(f) Two curtains of web reinforcement,
shear (i.e., diagonal tension, diagonal
(g) Shear span ratio, M Vlw ≥ 1.0, compression, sliding at the base) or lap
(h) Boundary longitudinal reinforcement ratio, slice failures prior to yielding of
ρ Long . BE ≥ 6 f 'c (psi) f y , longitudinal reinforcement.
(i) Ratio provided-to-required (per ACI 318-

Parameters That Primarily Control Wall Lateral Drift Capacity

A series of linear regression analyses were performed to identify parameters with the greatest
impact on lateral drift capacity of walls with SBEs. Based on this assessment, the following
parameters were found to produce the greatest impact: (1) parameter, λb = lw c b 2 (Fig. 1),
which accounts for the impact of concrete and reinforcement material properties, axial load, wall
geometry, and quantities and distributions of longitudinal reinforcement at the boundary and
within the web, in which c is computed for an extreme fiber concrete compressive strain of
0.003, and lw is the wall length, (2) ratio of the maximum wall shear stress to the square root of
the concrete compressive strength, v max f 'c , where vmax is the maximum shear stress that
develops in a wall where yielding of tension reinforcement limits the shear force demand, and (3)
the configuration of the boundary transverse reinforcement used, i.e., whether overlapping hoops
are used as opposed to use of a single perimeter hoop with intermediate crossties (Fig. 2). Other
detailing parameters investigated using a reduced dataset of 78 full code-compliant walls, such as
the: (4) minimum Ash, provided Ash,required , (5) s db , (6) hx, and (7) degree of lateral support
 max

Drift Capacit

Drift Capacity
3
135º-135º hooks (16) Hoop+crossties with 135º-135º hooks (16) 3
90º-135º hooks (13) Hoop+crossties with 90º-135º hooks (13)
28) Overlapping hoops (28) 2
2
1
1
0
provided to boundary longitudinal bars,0 did not significantly impact wall drift capacity. 0
0 2 4 6 0 40 80 120
Furthermore, no real correlation between axial load ratio,
c/b P Ag f 'c , (ranging lfrom 0.0
= l c/b2 to 0.35)
b w
b) vmax/÷ fc'5psi > 5 (> 0.42 in MPa)
( )
5 5
4 5 6 0 20 40 60 80 100 120
alone and wall drift capacity was observed, and M VlMean is considered indirectly in164 specimens
the shear 164 specimens
lb = lwc/b 4
2
COV = 0.20 4 COV = 0.18
w = 1.03 Mean = 1.03 Mean = 1.03
COV = 0.16 4

Drift Capacity (%)

b) max fc psi > 5 (> 0.42 in parameter.
v /÷ stress A more detailed assessment of each parameter is presented elsewhere [13] by

Drift Capacity (%)

'
MPa)
using the dataset of 164 tests, as well
3 as by comparing companion 3tests as deemed appropriate. 3

2 2 2
5 5
164 specimens 6 vmax/÷with
Hoop+crossties fc' psi
135º-135º
£ 5 (£hooks
0.42 (15)
in MPa) Hoop+crossties with 135º-135º hooks (16)

Drift Capacity (%)

Mean = 1.03 Hoop+crossties with 90º-135º hooks 1(38) 1
1 4 5 Hoop+crossties with 90º-135º hooks (13)
4 COV = 0.18 v /÷ f '
psi
hoops (23) > 5 (> 0.42 in MPa)
Overlappingmax c

Drift Capacity (%)

Overlapping hoops (28)
Drift Capacity (%)

0 4 0 0
6 3 3
º hooks Single hoop+crossties with 135º-135º hooks 0 40 80 120 0 40 80 120 0
hooks Single hoop+crossties with 90º-135º hooks 3 lb = lwc/b2 lb = lwc/b2
5 Overlapping 2
hoops 2
(a)20 b and 40< lb (b) 0 b
4
1 1
1
3 0 40 80 120 0 40 80 120
0 0
2 lb = lwc/b2 lb = lwc/b2
0 40 80 120 0 40 80 120
1 lb = lwc/b2 50
= l/w÷c/b
(a)lvb max fc' 2psi £ 5 (b) vmax/÷ fc' psi > 5
50 80 60 50 (a) 50 (b)

No. of Specimens
Figure 1. Variation of drift capacity vs. λb . Figure 2. Impact of boundary transverse
No. of Specimens

40 40 40 40
60
40 30 30
0 30 30

reinforcement configuration (number of tests

40
20 20 20 20
20
6 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 10 10
20 10 10

lwc/b2 0 given in parentheses). 0 0 0 0 0

10
8

0. 9

5
1. 0

0.
3

0.

1.
4
7

6
8

8
0
0. 9

0.

2
1

0
0

1-
2

4-
3

6-
5

3-
3

3.

5-
5

0.

7-
7

10
2.
4

0.
8

1.

7-

5-
8-

0-
0.

-3
5

-2

-4

2.

3.

9-
5-

5-
1.

5-
1-

4-

6-
3-

5-

7-

0-
7-

5-

0-
8-

0-

0.

1.
5-
9-

0.

1.
20

2-

3-
10

30

1-

1.

2.

3.
2.
0.

1.
0.

sv/db Min. Ash, provided/Ash,r

£ 5.5 in psi (£ 0.46 in MPa)
sv/db Ash, prov./Ash,req: X-Dir. P/(fc'Ag) (%) M/(Vlw)
60 60 60 60 60 50
(e) (f)

5
Experimental Drift Capacity (%)

No. of Specimens
No. of Specimens

40

5º hooks
6 a) Eq. 1
Single hoop+crossties with 135º-135º hooks
Prediction of Drift
b) Eq. 2 Capacity 40 40 40 40 40
30

20
20
hooks Single hoop+crossties with 90º-135º hooks 20 20 20 20

4 Application of linear regression analyses for the dataset of 164 tests, considering the variables
10
5 Overlapping hoops 0 0
0 0 0 0

0. 75
10

0. .5
5

0. 65
5
12 5

20 0

0. 3
15 0

0
10

-2
5

-1
0

10 0

<5

7.
5

-0

.
12

20

0.
0

-1
0
15

5
30

5-
0
00

-0
-1

0.
-2

0
<5

7.

-2
2

-4
4

15
-1

-3
3

10
5-
5-

<1

1-

25
-1

75
7.
0-

4-
0-

5-
1-

3-

65
10

5-

0-

2-
15

>3
5-

15

30
10

20
7.

0.
90

that significantly impact lateral drift capacity, resulted in Eq. 1 for mean drift capacity of walls lw/b b (mm) c/b c/lw lw/b hx/b
4
3 with SBEs, with mean and COV of 1.0 and 0.15, respectively, over the entire range of drift
3
values, from roughly 1.5% drift to 3.5% drift (Fig. 3).
2 2
1 ! 𝛿 ! !"# 𝜆 𝑣
1 % = 3.85 − −
COV = 0.15 COV = 0.15 (1)
ℎ! 𝛼 10 𝑓!! psi
0 164 Specimens 164 Specimens
6 0 0 20All bars40supported
60 80
0Not alllwc/b
2
bars 1
supported 2 3 4 50 1 2 3 4 5
> 5.5 in psi (> 0.46 inWhere
MPa) λb = lw cDrift
Predicted α = 60 where
b 2 ;Capacity (%) overlapping hoops are
Predicted usedCapacity
Drift and 45 where
(%) a combination of a
single perimeter hoop with supplemental crossties is used.
5
Experimental Drift Capacity (%)

Entire dataset (164 tests) Entire dataset (164 tests)

Mean = 1.0 Mean = 0.97
4
COV = 0.15 COV = 0.16
3

1 Entire dataset (M/Vlw 1.0) Entire dataset (M/Vlw 1.0)

40 80 120 1.0 £ M/Vlw < 2.0 1.0 £ M/Vlw < 2.0
lwc/b 2
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5
2" hx 4" Predicted Drift Capacity (%) 5 Predicted Drift Capacity (%)
4" < hx " Figure 3. Predicteda)drift
Eq. 1capacity from Eq. 1. b) Eq. 2 164 Specimens
s/db < 4
4
4 s/db 6
ate Top Drift (%)

6 6
Single hoop+crossties with 135º-135º hooks 3 Single hoop+crossties with 135º-135º hooks
Single hoop+crossties with 90º-135º hooks Single hoop+crossties with 90º-135º hooks
5 5
5 Overlapping Hoops Overlapping Hoops
(%)

2
a) Eq. 1 b) Eq. 2
)

)
 Conclusions

Lateral drift capacity of ACI 318-14 code-compliant special walls is primarily a function of c b ,
lw b , v max f 'c , and use of overlapping hoops as opposed to a single perimeter hoop with
supplemental crossties. Depending on these variables, wall drift capacity can vary from 1.25% to
3.5%. A slenderness parameter, λb = lw c b 2 , was defined that provides an efficient means to
account for the impact of several other parameters on wall lateral drift capacity. For walls with
v max f 'c psi ≤ 5 , use of overlapping hoops, as opposed to use of a single perimeter hoop with
supplemental crossties, provides improved drift capacity if c b ≥ 2.5 or λb ≥ 40 . Finally, a drift
capacity equation (Eq. 1) was developed to accurately predict drift capacity of walls with SBEs,
with mean and COV of 1.0 and 0.15, respectively.

References

1. ACI Committee 318. Building Code Requirements for Reinforced Concrete (ACI 318-83). American Concrete
Institute: Detroit, MI, 1983, 155 pp.
2. ACI Committee 318. Building Code Requirements for Structural Concrete (ACI 318-99) and Commentary
(318R-99). American Concrete Institute: Detroit, MI, 1999, 391 pp.
3. ACI Committee 318. Building Code Requirements for Structural Concrete (ACI 318-14) and Commentary.
American Concrete Institute: Farmington Hills, MI, 2014, 519 pp.
4. Oesterle RG, Aristizabal-Ochoa JD, Fiorato AE, Russell HG, Corley WG. Earthquake Resistant Structural
Walls–Phase II. Report to National Science Foundation (ENV77-15333), Construction Technology
Laboratories, Portland Cement Association: Skokie, IL, 1979, 331 pp.
5. Oesterle RG, Fiorato AE, Johal LS, Carpenter JE, Russell HG, Corley WG. Earthquake Resistant Structural
Walls–Tests of Isolated Walls. Report to National Science Foundation (GI-43880), Construction Technology
Laboratories, Portland Cement Association: Skokie, IL, 1976, 315 pp.
6. Paulay T, Goodsir WJ. The ductility of structural walls. Bulletin of the New Zealand National Society for
Earthquake Engineering 1985; 18: 250-269.
7. Wallace JW, Moehle JP. Ductility and detailing requirements of bearing wall buildings. Journal of Structural
Engineering 1992; 6: 1625-1644.
8. Wallace JW. A new methodology for seismic design of RC shear walls. Journal of Structural Engineering,
ASCE 1994; 120 (3): 863-884.
9. Thomsen JH, Wallace JW. Displacement-based design of slender reinforced concrete structural walls—
experimental verification. Journal of Structural Engineering 2004; 130, (4): 618-630.
10. Segura CL. Seismic Performance Limitations of Slender Reinforced Concrete Walls. Ph.D. Dissertation,
University of California, Los Angeles: CA, 2017, 238 pp.
11. Abdullah SA, Wallace JW. UCLA-RCWalls Database for Reinforced Concrete Structural Walls. Proceedings
of the 11th National Conference in Earthquake Engineering, EERI, Los Angeles, CA. 2018.
12. Abdullah SA, Wallace JW. UCLA database for reinforced concrete structural walls: UCLA-RCWalls.
Earthquake Spectra, (submitted for review).
13. Abdullah SA, Wallace JW. Drift capacity of reinforced concrete structural walls with special boundary
elements. ACI Structural Journal, (submitted for review).