Seismic performance assessment of reinforced concrete wall piers for out-of-plane seismic loads

The purpose of this study is to assess the seismic performance of reinforced concrete wall piers for out-of-plane seismic loads, and to provide a method for developing a new evaluation procedure. A non-linear finite element analysis program, RCAHEST (Reinforced Concrete Analysis in Higher Evaluation System Technology), is used to carry out all the seismic analyses of reinforced concrete wall piers. The wall piers were modelled using a combination of reinforced concrete shell elements and newly developed interface elements with six degrees of freedom. The reinforced concrete shell interface element is used to account for local discontinuous deformations at the boundary plane caused by abrupt changes in stiffness where members with different thickness are connected. Novel damage indices were modified to provide a means of quantifying numerically the seismic performance level in wall piers sustained under earthquake loading. Six reinforced concrete wall pier specimens were loaded in the weak direction under cyclic loading. The failure mode of the wall piers was either compression failure of the concrete or fracture of the longitudinal reinforcing bars due to low-cycle fatigue. The proposed numerical method for the seismic performance assessment of reinforced concrete wall piers for out-of-plane seismic loads is verified by comparison with the experimental and analytical results.