The influence of the diameter of the longitudinal reinforcement of RC walls to their displacements against lateral instability

Abstract

The possibility of failure because of lateral instability is limited significantly with the proper choice of an adequate thickness, which is specified by (most) modern seismic codes as a percentage of the height of the bottom storey. The current work investigates one parameter that may be affecting the stability of structural walls. This parameter is the diameter of the longitudinal reinforcement of the boundary edges of load-bearing walls. It contains an experimental research that tries to investigate the influence of the diameter of longitudinal reinforcement to the displacements of test specimens. It has to be noted that in order to examine experimentally the influence of the diameter of longitudinal reinforcement, test specimens of scale 1:3 simulating the boundary edges of structural walls were used. These specimens were reinforced with the same or almost the same longitudinal reinforcement ratios (2.68% - 2.79%) but had a different number of reinforcement bars of varying diameter. The diameters of bars which were used were equal to 8mm and 10mm. The specimens which were compared to each other contained (apart from bars of different diameter) a different number of bars and consequently a different way of placement of these bars at the wall end sections.