Design for earthquake-resistant short RC structural walls

The application of the compressive force path method for the design of earthquake-resistant reinforced concrete structural walls with a shear span-to-depth ratio larger than 2.5 has been shown by experiment to lead to a significant reduction of the code specified transverse reinforcement within the critical lengths without compromising the code requirements for structural performance. The present work complements these findings with experimental results obtained from tests on structural walls with a shear span-to-depth ratio smaller than 2.5. The results show that the compressive force path method is capable of safeguarding the code performance requirements without the need of transverse reinforcement confining concrete within the critical lengths. Moreover, it is shown that ductility can be considerably increased by improving the strength of the two bottom edges of the walls through the use of structural steel elements extending to a small distance of the order of 100 mm from the wall base.