Seismic performance of precast concrete shear wall using grouted sleeve connections for section steels reinforced at wall ends

A novel precast concrete (PC) shear wall was proposed by disconnecting the vertical rebars in the middle zone of the wall and using grouted sleeve connections for section steels at wall ends. The advantage of this method is to alleviate constructional difficulties when assembling traditional PC shear walls. As an extended study, this paper investigates the seismic performance of the PC shear walls. Four wall specimens of 1:2 scale were tested under pseudo-static loading, including two cast-in-place (CIP) specimens and two PC specimens with different axial compression ratios. Afterwards, parametric studies were performed using the finite element method, considering the axial compression ratio and yield strength of section steel. Test results indicated that the PC and CIP specimens had comparable ultimate resistances, and exhibited similar ductilities and stiffness degradations. The energy dissipation capacities corresponding to ultimate resistances of the PC specimens were 41% and 19% smaller compared to those of the CIP specimens under axial compression ratios of 0.3 and 0.5, respectively. Numerical results found that the ultimate resistances of the PC shear walls increased by 59% when the axial compression ratios increasing from 0.1 to 0.6. Increasing the yield strengths of section steels from 235 MPa to 460 MPa, the ultimate resistances of the PC shear walls slightly increased by 11%, and the energy dissipation capacities improved by 26%.