Shear behavior of precast concrete wall structure based on two-way hollow-core precast panels

In this study, a new precast concrete shear wall system based on two-way hollow-core precast panels (TWHCPP) is proposed. Considering that the ductility of a shear wall is strongly related to its shear behavior, the shear behavior of the newly proposed system was investigated. First, pseudo-static tests were performed for one cast-in-place shear wall specimen and three TWHCPP shear wall specimens. Test results indicate that the cast-in-place shear wall specimen experienced diagonal tension failure and its axial load carrying capacity decreased abruptly when the peak strength was attained. In contrast, the TWHCPP shear wall can effectively avoid such brittle failure and can sustain the vertical and lateral loads at the limit state. Second, a numerical simulation method for the TWHCPP shear wall was proposed and applied to the three TWHCPP shear wall specimens. The predicted strengths and failure mechanisms show good agreement with the experimental results. Finally, a shear strength estimation method was proposed for the TWHCPP shear wall system. Compared to the experimental results, the method yields conservative estimations; thus, it can be a suitable approach to the TWHCPP shear wall design.