Investigation of reinforced concrete walls in two-way action by finite element method

Currently, the design of reinforced concrete wall panels under eccentric axial loading only is carried out using empirical or semi-empirical methods and hence their scope of application is limited. In particular walls supported on all sides (i.e. two-way action behaviour) have been given little treatment. In view of this, the authors have undertaken an extensive investigation on walls in two-way action using the Layered Finite Element Method (LFEM). This paper initially presents comparisons of LFEM output with published test results on concrete walls in oneand two-way action. The paper then focuses on a parametric study on the axial strength of two way walls with varying properties such as slenderness (H/tw), aspect (H/L), reinforcement ratio (ρ) and eccentricity (e).