Published works

This paper investigates the displacement capacity of lightly reinforced rectangular walls. The design parameters and detailing of the walls considered in this study are typical of low-to-moderate seismic regions such as Australia. Obtaining accurate estimates of the displacement capacity of lightly reinforced walls is a vital step towards producing realistic estimates of fragility curves of RC buildings in low-to-moderate seismic regions. It is shown in this investigation that the nominal yield displacement capacity for reinforced concrete walls that have low amounts of longitudinal reinforcement can sometimes be overestimated using the existing equations. An alternative approach is proposed here which gives a better match with experimental and numerical results and is particularly important for the reinforced concrete walls that exhibit a single crack in the plastic hinge zone. An ultimate curvature equation is proposed for when a wall is estimated to form a single crack in the plastic hinge region. A plastic hinge length equation which has been specifically derived for these types of walls is also introduced to estimate the plastic displacement of the wall due to plastic rotation at the base. Experimental and finite element modelling results are used to compare the displacement capacity predictions.