Experimental study on cyclic behavior of reinforced concrete parallel redundancy walls

Reinforced concrete (RC) shear walls are one of the most commonly used lateral-load resisting systems in high-rise buildings. RC Parallel redundancy walls studied herein consist of two parts nested to each other. These two parts have different mechanical behaviors and energy dissipation mechanisms. In this paper, experimental studies of four 1/2-scale specimens representing this concept, which are subjected to inplane cyclic loading, are presented and test results are discussed. Two specimens consist of a wall frame with barbell-shaped walls embedded in it, and the other two consist of a wall frame and braced walls nested each other. The research mainly focuses on the failure mechanism, strength, hysteresis loop, energy dissipation capacity and stiffness of these walls. Results show that the RC parallel redundancy wall is an efficient lateral load resisting component that acts as a \"dual\" system with good ductility and energy dissipation capacity. One main part absorbs a greater degree of the energy exerted by an earthquake and fails first, whereas the other part can still behave as an independent role in bearing loads after earthquakes.