Experimental study on the seismic behaviour of RC beams with standing and hanging walls

Abstract

Recently, earthquake damage to non-structural walls has become one of the important issues in Japan. Some buildings were demolished after the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake due to damage of non-structural walls without any significant damage in structural members. After that, several projects were launched to develop a new method to take into account the effect of non-structural walls (hanging, standing, and wing walls). In this paper, experimental test results for beam-column joints with non-structural walls are presented. The objectives of the tests were to investigate the equivalent length and hinge location of beams with hanging and standing walls. The results showed that the yield hinge located at the surface of the wing walls and beam-column joint should be modelled as rigid to estimate the deformation of the beams, regardless of the thickness and height of the wall. A tri-linear modelling method for beams with hanging and standing walls was also proposed, and its applicability was confirmed with the test results.