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The walls of modern low-rise economic housing in several Latin American countries are typically thin and have a low concrete strength, web steel ratios that are smaller than the minimum prescribed by current codes, and web shear reinforcement made of welded-wire mesh. In light of these particular wall characteristics, research was aimed at developing a performance-based backbone model capable of predicting the seismic behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) walls for one-and two-story housing. The selected tri-linear model is associated with three limit states: diagonal cracking, peak shear strength, and ultimate deformation capacity. The model was developed on the basis of the observed response of 39 quasi-static and shake table experiments. Iterative nonlinear regression analyses were performed for deriving the semi-empirical equations in this study. The paper also discusses the adequacy of some existing models to predict the seismic behavior of RC walls and the limitations of the proposed equations.

SUMMARY Experimental evidence supporting the fact that results from quasi‐static (QS) test of low‐rise reinforced concrete walls may be safely assumed as a lower limit of strength and displacement, and energy dissipation capacities are still scarce. The aim of this paper is to compare the seismic performance of 12 reinforced concrete walls for low‐rise housing: six prototype walls tested under QS‐cyclic loading and six models tested under shaking table excitations. Variables studied were wall geometry, type of concrete, web steel ratio, type of web reinforcement and testing method. Comparison of results from dynamic and QS‐cyclic tests indicated that stiffness and strength properties were dependent on the loading rate, the strength mechanisms associated with the failure mode, the low‐cycle fatigue, and the cumulative parameters, such as displacement demand and energy dissipated. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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