Gonzalo Lema, Sebastián Calderón, Antonio Suazo, and Cristián Sandoval
i PhD student, Universidad de Concepción, Concepción, Chile, glema2017@udec.cl
ii Assistant Professor, Universidad de Concepción, Concepción, Chile, sebastian.calderon@udec.cl
iii PhD student, Pontificia Universidad Católica, Santiago, Chile, asuazo1@uc.cl
iv Associate Professor, Pontificia Universidad Católica, Santiago, Chile, cristian.sandoval@uc.cl
ABSTRACT
Evidence suggests that shear walls might be more damaged than they appear after a seismic event. Many cracks become undetectable once the load is removed, representing a real challenge for post-earthquake structural assessments. Accordingly, this research proposes a methodology to assess and quantify the development of visible damage in BJR-PG-RM walls subjected to in-plane cyclic loads. The study aims to quantify cracks observed at peak deformation and the residual cracks remaining after load removal. This allows the assessment and quantification of the effective damage incurred by the wall following a simulated earthquake. A detailed damage characterization was conducted on three test walls, extracting surface damage indicators such as crack width, crack length, internal crack area, and bounding box area of cracks. These damage parameter indices were obtained at different load stages of the in-plane cyclic load test. Observations revealed that walls can conceal up to 35% of the visible damage upon unloading. This capacity to conceal visible damage diminishes after the wall reaches its peak shear resistance. This study also highlights that relying solely on maximum crack width is ineffective in accurately characterizing the damage state of a wall. It is not capable of reliably predicting whether a wall has reached its peak shear resistance. In contrast, crack length and internal crack area emerge as suitable candidates for damage characterization, exhibiting a consistent progression that enables clear differentiation between damage states before and after reaching peak shear resistance. This study presents a novel methodology for assessing and evaluating damage in masonry walls under in-plane cyclic loading. It contributes to a deeper understanding of the damage progression in masonry shear walls, providing valuable damage characterization.
KEYWORDS: damage assessment, damage progression, in-plane cyclic loads, crack development, closing cracks.
132-Lema.pdf
