Experimental study on out-of-plane seismic performance of precast composite sidewalls of utility tunnel with grouting-sleeve joints

Abstract

The precast composite reinforced concrete wall with the advantages of fewer joints, superior impermeability and rapid construction provides an efficient and environmental friendly alternative in the construction of underground utility tunnels in the last few years. To investigate the seismic performance of precast concrete composite walls of utility tunnels with grouting-sleeve connection under out-of-plane loads, a series of quasi-static cyclic tests were performed on the full-scale sidewall specimens with different axial compression ratios in this study. The experimental results including the failure modes, crack distributions, and the influence of different connections on the out-of-plane seismic performance of precast concrete composite wall were carefully examined and compared with those from the cyclic tests of the cast-in-place sidewalls of the utility tunnel. The test results show that the seismic performance of the precast concrete composite sidewall specimen, such as the hysteresis curves, the ultimate bearing capacity, stiffness degradation pattern and the ductility ratio, is basically the same as that of the cast-in-place specimen, indicating that the seismic performance of the prefabricated structure is equivalent to that of the cast-in-place structure. Moreover, the grouting-sleeves of the joints can effectively transfer the reinforcement stress until the failure of the precast concrete composite sidewall specimens, which exhibits excellent out-of-plane ductility and serviceability.

Keywords

Precast concrete composite walls / Cyclic response / Seismic performance / Grouting sleeve / Failure mechanism

Data availability

Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Declaration of competing interest

Mi Zhao is an early career editorial board member for Underground Space and was not involved in the editorial review or the decision to publish this article. All authors declare that there are no competing interests.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51978020, 52378470, and 52220105011). Sincere thanks are extended to the Key Laboratory of Urban Security and Disaster Engineering of Ministry of Education, Beijing University of Technology for providing the test facilities.

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