Basic Study on Reinforced Concrete Shear Walls Without Boundary Columns Retrofitted by Carbon Fiber Sheets

Abstract

Reinforced concrete (RC) buildings in Peru use low ductility walls, with rectangular cross-sections and reinforced with wire mesh and vertical reinforcement bars at boundary ends, as structural elements. These structural elements have no columns, have small amounts of reinforcing bars and are expected to fail in a brittle manner. In this study, a performance verification test is conducted on the use of carbon fiber sheets (CFS) as a retrofitting method for shear walls without boundary columns. The focus is on retrofitting walls that fail in flexural mode. In other words, although an increase in strength cannot be expected, CFS retrofitting can delay the concrete crushing of the shear wall base that occurs during flexural failure; and the aim is to verify this improvement in deformation performance due to CFS retrofitting. From the test, by retrofitting the RC shear wall without boundary columns with CFS, it was found that postmaximum strength deterioration was more gradual, and deformation performance was improved. And Ultimate limit deformation of specimen which was partially retrofitted at the boundary ends of the wall was larger than that of specimen which was retrofitted over the entire wall span.