Quantitative crack evaluation in slender reinforced concrete walls with rectangular section

Abstract

Past earthquakes have shown that cracking affects post-earthquake functionality and accounted for huge repair costs for reinforced concrete (RC) wall buildings, even though the code-compliant seismic design prevents collapse. Engineers should know the maximum residual flexural crack width and volume of repair material needed for the flexural cracks to determine the damage degree and the repair cost. This paper presents the experimental campaign on four RC slender walls that investigated the effect of confining reinforcement and thickness of the wall on flexural crack parameters under quasi-static reversed cyclic loading. The width of all flexural cracks was measured when reaching each cycle peak drift and when unloading to zero lateral loads. Crack widths at peak and residual states increased with increasing peak drift. Based on the experimental observations, it was found that the maximum residual crack width is obtained as a $ \pm 30%$ simple function of the extreme tension fiber elongation of the wall tensile fiber within error. In addition, this paper outlines methods to calculate the volume of repair material for flexural cracks from the extreme tension fiber elongation of the wall. With the fundamental rules found from the experiment in this paper, it will become possible to obtain the maximum crack width and the volume of repair material from simple numerical analysis tools such as a multi-spring line element model.

Keywords

Flexural crack / Residual crack / RC wall / Damage evaluation / Crack width / Crack length

Relevance to Resilience

Modern society demands buildings that are not only safe but can also recover rapidly after an earthquake. Reinforced concrete walls are commonly used as lateral resisting systems in mid- to high-rise buildings. Past earthquakes have shown that most reinforced concrete walls suffer minor damage, such as cracks and spalling. To facilitate damage assessment, we propose a methodology to compute the maximum crack width and crack void volume (volume of repair material needed) for slender reinforced concrete walls. This proposed method allows engineers and stakeholders to evaluate the extent of damage and make decisions about whether to use, repair, or replace the wall. Additionally, knowing the crack void volume enables the estimation of repair costs. Assessing the maximum crack width and crack void volume contributes to a more comprehensive repair plan.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Priyana Rajbhandari: Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Chanipa Netrattana: Investigation, Methodology, Validation, Visualization, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Taku Obara: Investigation. Kono Susumu: Supervision, Conceptualization.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

The experimental work was financially supported by JSPS Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research between 2016 - 2019 (PI: Susumu Kono) and the following research works were supported by the Collaborative Research Project of Materials and Structures Laboratory and World Research Hub Program, Tokyo Institute of Technology. The authors appreciate the scholarship from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan.

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