Experimental study on seismic performance of L-shaped partly precast reinforced concrete shear wall with cast-in-situ boundary elements

In order to promote industrial production of reinforced concrete shear wall, a typical partly precast reinforced concrete shear wall with both end boundary elements cast-in-situ and the other part precast is experimentally studied. In this paper, three L-shaped specimens of this kind and one completely cast-in-situ specimen as a control group are tested under low-frequency cyclic loading to investigate their safety, applicability, and different characteristics. For the partly precast specimen, the vertical distributed reinforcements of precast part are equivalently spliced by grouting sleeves arranged along the center line of the wall whereas the horizontal reinforcements are directly anchored into the cast-in-situ boundary elements. During the test, the axial compression ratio of these specimens is fixed at 0.2, 0.3, and 0.5, respectively. Such test phenomena and test data including failure modes, yielding load and displacement, the skeleton curve, energy dissipation, stiffness degradation, ductility, and so on are observed, analyzed, and compared. Chinese code and American Concrete Institute code are adopted to estimate the bearing capacity. Results show that the partly precast specimens have good integrity. With the increase of axial compression ratio, the bearing capacity of these partly precast specimens increases whereas the ductility decreases. It is also found that the partly precast specimens have slightly lower bearing capacity compared with the cast-in-situ specimen as well as excellent deformation capacity and ductility, which indicates the tested partly precast shear wall has good and reliable seismic performance and can be used as a structural element in building construction.