Wall 1: Cyclic horizontal displacement test with an axial load ratio of 0.15 for a shear wall representative of Chilean construction practices prior to the Maule 2010 earthquake.

A representative prototype wall was defined based on wall characteristics of five damaged buildings during 2010, Mw=8.8 Chile earthquake. Most walls in actual building were designed without boundary confinement because NCh433, the Chilean seismic design code at that time, was based on ACI318-95 and it eliminated the transversal reinforcement requirements at walls boundaries. This prototype wall was used to design wall 1 of the experimental campaign used 1:2 scale.

The wall specimen was subjected to constant vertical load of 0.15f’c Ag (Axial Ratio Load of 0.15) and to cyclic horizontal displacement with increasing amplitude. The wall had length of 700 mm, a thickness of 100 mm aspect ratio (M/Vlw) of 2.5. No special boundaries element was provided. The flexural-compressive failure mode exhibited by damaged walls during the earthquake was reproduced in the tests. The wall specimen evidenced bar buckling of vertical bars, brittle concrete crushing, and out-of-plane buckling, which suggest that the axial load and the thickness of RC walls should be limited in critical walls to prevent brittle localized failures.