Nonlinear model of reinforced concrete frames retrofitted by in-filled HPFRCC walls.

A number of studies have suggested that the use of high ductile and high shear materials, such as Engineered Cementitious Composites (ECC) and High Performance Fiber Reinforced Cementitious Composites (HPFRCC), significantly enhances the shear capacity of structural elements, even with/without shear reinforcements. The present study emphasizes the development of a nonlinear model of shear behaviour of a HPFRCC panel for application to the seismic retrofit of reinforced concrete buildings. To model the shear behaviour of HPFRCC panels, the original Modified Compression Field Theory (MCFT) for conventional reinforced concrete panels has been newly revised for reinforced HPFRCC panels, and is referred to here as the HPFRCC-MCFT model. A series of experiments was conducted to assess the shear behaviour of HPFRCC panels subjected to pure shear, and the proposed shear model has been verified through an experiment involving panel elements under pure shear. The proposed shear model of a HPFRCC panel has been applied to the prediction of seismic retrofitted reinforced concrete buildings with in-filled HPFRCC panels. In retrofitted structures, the in-filled HPFRCC element is regarded as a shear spring element of a low-rise shear wall ignoring the flexural response, and reinforced concrete elements for beam or beam-column member are modelled by a finite plastic hinge zone model. An experimental study of reinforced concrete frames with in-filled HPFRCC panels was also carried out and the analysis model was verified with correlation studies of experimental results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]