Lateral Load-Carrying Capacity of Low-Rise Reinforced Concrete Walls in Nuclear Safety-Related Structures

Abstract

Nuclear safety-related structures are crucial for ensuring the safety of nuclear facilities and preventing the leakage of radioactive materials, with the primary structural component being low-rise reinforced concrete (LRC) walls. These walls are required to carry combined in-plane axial and horizontal loads, making the accurate prediction of their lateral load-carrying capacity particularly important. In this study, six LRC walls with aspect ratios between 0.33 and 1 were tested and a model for the prediction of the lateral load-carrying capacity of LRC walls was established based on the observed failure mode and plastic limit theory. The parameter in the model was calibrated using the obtained results in this test along with a database containing 131 walls in the literature. Compared to the equations in the American standard ACI 349 and the French standard RCC-CW, the proposed equation is most suitable for assessing the lateral load-carrying capacity of LRC walls in nuclear safety-related structures. The calculated values of the proposed equation exhibit a ratio closest to 1 when compared to experimental values and possess the minimum degree of variation. The computational results reveal that the proposed equations in this study exhibit superior precision and stability.