F1B04

Evaluation of a Shear Wall Reinforced with Glass FRP Bars Subjected to

Lateral Cyclic Loading

Nayera Mohamed
PhD candidate, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Canada

Ahmed Sabry Farghaly

Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Canada

Brahim Benmokrane
Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Canada

Kenneth W. Neale
Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Canada

ABSTRACT

With the establishment of several construction applications of FRP reinforcement, there is a

need for a system to resist lateral loads induced from wind and earthquake loads in these
constructions. Reinforced concrete shear walls have shown effective performance in
resisting lateral loads caused by wind and earthquake loads. Therefore, shear walls are
frequently used in parking garages and multi-story buildings exposed to high lateral loading.
This research involved testing a shear wall totally reinforced with FRP bars. Early
information showed the inapplicability of reinforcing shear walls with FRP, but after
overcoming the difficulties encountered, the results showed an opposite conclusion. The
results obtained demonstrated significantly high utilization levels of the shear wall
reinforced with FRP in term of drift, deformability, and failure mode.

The large scale shear wall experiment was carried out to examine the strength, stiffness and
deformability by observing the degradation in stiffness and strength while resisting in plane
reversed loading, and to measure the energy dissipation of the system accounting for the
deformability of the shear wall. The shear wall specimen was in the medium-rise wall
category where both flexural and shear deformations exist. The specimen was totally
reinforced with glass FRP bars to resist flexure, shear, and sliding shear deformations.

KEYWORD

Glass FRP bar, concrete, shear wall, cyclic lateral loading, ductility, strength
1. INTRODUCTION
The investigation reported herein addresses the
behavior of a shear wall with a medium aspect
ratio which is common in moderate-rise buildings.
The shear wall aspect ratio is simply defined as the
height-to-length ratio (hw/lw). A large proportion of
shear walls constructed in the U.S. and Canada are
classified as medium-rise; with wall height-to
length aspect ratios (hw/lw) typically between 2 and
4 [1]. In such shear walls both nonlinear flexural
and nonlinear shear deformations significantly
contribute to the lateral response.
Horizontal construction joints in a shear wall may
become the weakest link in the chain of resistance
and is considered a poor energy dissipater [2].
From the only previous experimental work on
shear walls reinforced with CFRP grids [3], it was
found that the vertical reinforcement was pulled
out from the base slab causing low energy
absorption capacity and high degradation in lateral
load capacity in comparison with steel reinforced
shear walls. Paulay and Priestley [2] explained
that the possibility of failure by sliding shear is a
feature of shear walls as large shear stresses are
transferred across crack by means of shear friction.
Accordingly, construction joints are subject to
axial compression or tension and bending
moments beside shear forces. Therefore, to ensure
the structural resistance of walls and ensure energy
dissipation, it is relevant to provide sufficient
reinforcement across construction joints [2].
The main objective of the present study was to
assess the possibility to construct shear walls
totally reinforced with glass FRP bars which can
be comparable to steel reinforced shear wall and
be used in FRP reinforced structures. This goal is
reached by designing sufficient reinforcement, to
avoid all brittle failure modes in a shear wall with
equal shear and flexure contribution.
2. EXPERIMENTAL PROGRAM
2.1 Design of Wall Specimen
The shear wall specimen represents a large-scale
moderate-rise shear wall. As illustrated in Fig.1,
the height of the tested shear wall (hw) was 3500
mm. The horizontal length (lw) was 1500 mm
including two 200 mm boundary elements at each
end, which were embedded in the wall with the
same thickness of the wall. The wall thickness (bw)
was 200 mm. The base slab thickness was 700 mm.
The base was used to fix the specimen to the lab
rigid floor and as an anchorage length for the
vertical bars. The base slab is anchored to the rigid
lab floor using four bolts 66 mm diameter, as
shown in Fig.1. The axial compression force
applied on the wall was taken as 0.07Acfc’,
simulating a real loading condition. The CSA
A23.3 [4] and ACI 318 [5] provisions for
minimum dimensions and reinforcement ratio
have been applied to the wall specimen. The
design against flexure, shear and confinement
were satisfied by using the CSA S806-11 [6] and
ACI 440.1R-06 [7] provisions.
200
3500
1500 mm
350
500
350 2000
350 1200
2700 mm
Fig.1 Dimension of test specimen
The design of FRP-reinforced concrete members
for flexure is analogous to the design of steel-
reinforced concrete members. Experimental data
on concrete members reinforced with FRP bars
show that flexural capacity can be calculated
based on assumptions similar to those made for
members reinforced with steel bars. The design of
members reinforced with FRP bars should take
into account the uniaxial stress-strain relationship
of FRP materials. If FRP reinforcement ruptures,
failure of the member is sudden and catastrophic;
however, there would be limited warning of
impending failure in the form of extensive
cracking and large deflection due to the significant
elongation that FRP reinforcement experiences
before rupture. In any case, the member would not
exhibit ductility as is commonly observed for
under-reinforced concrete beams reinforced with
steel reinforcing bars. The concrete crushing
failure mode is marginally more desirable for
flexural members reinforced with FRP bars. By
experiencing concrete crushing, a flexural member
does exhibit some plastic behavior before failure.
In conclusion, both failure modes (FRP rupture
and concrete crushing) are acceptable in governing
the design of flexural members reinforced with
FRP bars provided that strength and serviceability
criteria are satisfied. To compensate for the lack of
ductility, the member should possess a higher
reserve of strength. The margin of safety
suggested by CSA S806-11 [6] and ACI 440.1R-
06 [7] against failure is therefore higher than that
used in traditional steel-reinforced concrete design.
According to CSA A23.3 [4] and ACI 318-08 [5],
the nominal shear strength of a reinforced concrete
cross section Vn is the sum of the shear resistance
provided by concrete Vc and the steel shear
reinforcement Vs. Compared with a steel-
reinforced section with equal areas of longitudinal
reinforcement, a cross section using FRP flexural
reinforcement after cracking has a smaller depth to
the neutral axis because of the lower axial stiffness
(that is, product of reinforcement area and
modulus of elasticity). As a result, the shear
resistance provided by both aggregate interlock
and compressed concrete is smaller. Research on
the shear capacity of flexural members without
shear reinforcement has indicated that the concrete
shear strength is influenced by the stiffness of the
tensile (flexural) reinforcement. The contribution
200
of longitudinal FRP reinforcement in terms of
dowel action has not been determined. Because of
the lower strength and stiffness of FRP bars in the
transverse direction, however, it is assumed that
their dowel action contribution is less than that of
an equivalent steel area. Further research is needed
to quantify this effect. The concrete shear capacity
Vc of flexural members using FRP as main
reinforcement is simply the ACI 318-08 shear
equation for steel reinforcement modified by a
factor, which accounts for the axial stiffness of the
FRP reinforcement. The ACI 318-08 method used
to calculate the shear contribution of steel shear
reinforcement is applicable when using FRP as
shear reinforcement.
The wall shear capacity was designed higher than
the flexural capacity to ensure the flexural failure
of the specimen as desired. To prevent sliding
shear failure, one layer of grid of 45◦ inclined
GFRP bars was used in each direction as shown in
Fig.2. These inclined GFRP bars were anchored in
the base and in the wall with length equal to the
development length calculated from the CSA
S806-11 [6] provisions.
In addition, to assure wall ductility, the amount of
confinement in the boundary elements was
adopted according to the previous research [8]
which specify less than 110mm length of FRP bar
to avoid buckling failure. Therefore, the tie
spacing in boundaries was taken as 100 mm.
Boundary
element
Vertical
Reinforcement
Horizontal
Reinforcement
Base
Inclined
steel Reinforcement
Fig.2 Reinforcement layout of the wall specimen
Boundary Reinforcement
Stirrups
Vertical Reinforcement
1500 mm
Horizontal Reinforcement
Fig.3 Cross section of wall specimen
2.2 Materials
The wall was constructed using normal-weight,
ready-mixed concrete with an average 28-day
compressive strength of 40 MPa. The base slab
was reinforced with steel bars 25M to assure its
rigidity. The wall was reinforced with V-ROD
GFRP reinforcing bars [9] (Figs.2,3). For vertical
reinforcement, two layers of GFRP #3 bars spaced
at 120 mm for web reinforcement were used. Also,
8 GFRP #3 bars were used for each boundary
element at both ends of the wall, while horizontal
reinforcement was GFRP #4 bent bars spaced at
80 mm. The mechanical properties of the
reinforcing bars are shown in Tables 1 and 2. The
boundary reinforcement ratio was 1.4% according
to the boundary element area (200 x 200 mm),
while the vertical reinforcement ratio was 0.81%.
The horizontal reinforcement ratio was 1.6%. HM-
GFRP #3 was used for the inclined reinforcement,
the inclination angle was 45° and the spacing was
100 mm. The embedded length of the inclined Reaction
reinforcement in the base and in the wall was 650 wall
mm. Reinforcement details are shown in Figs.2,3.
2 steel triangles
Table 1 Mechanical properties of vertical bars for bracing
system
db Af Ef ffu εfu Steel beam
Bar
(mm) (mm²) (GPa) (MPa) (%)
#3 9.5 71.3 65.1 ± 2.5 1372 2.11
Actuator Axial load
Table 2 Tensile properties of bend bar (horizontal) for lateral system
Ef ffu εfu loading
Bent bar portions
(GPa) (MPa) (%)
Straight portion 51.9 ± 0.5 962 ± 19 1.85
Bend portion --- 500 ± 52 ---
db = bar nominal diameter, Af= nominal cross
sectional area, Ef = modulus of elasticity, ffu =
guaranteed tensile strength, εfu = ultimate strain Shear
wall Lateral bracing
specimen system
2.3 Experiment Setup
The test setup of the shear wall consists of four
main parts as follows (Fig.4)

a. Fixing the base to the lab floor; in preparation Wall base

for testing, the base was leveled on the laboratory
floor, and was fixed to the laboratory floor with
pre-stressing 66 mm Dywidag steel bars to prevent Fig.4 Specimen under setup for testing
uplifting during the application of lateral loading
and to prevent horizontal sliding. LVDT 1

b. Vertical loading system; simulating the gravity

load was applied through two hydraulic jacks LVDT 10 LVDT 9
applying tension on two high strength 34 mm LVDT 8 LVDT 7
Dywidag steel bars placed on both sides of the LVDT 2
wall. These steel bars were connected at the
LVDT 5

LVDT 6

hw /2

bottom to a stiff steel plate which is anchored with

the base slab to the lab rigid floor. The upper sides
of the bars are connected to a stiff steel beam
which rests on the top of the wall in order to
distribute the axial load.
c. Lateral loading system; load was applied to the
wall specimen by a 1000 kN MTS-hydraulic
actuator. The actuator was jointly connected to the
top steel beam and transmitted its force to the
specimen through a 50 mm thick steel bearing
plate. The system is designed to be self-supporting
and self-aligning during load reversals.
d. Lateral bracing system; to avoid out-of-plane
movements during testing, a bracing system was
provided at the level of the top beam which rested
on the wall. Two large steel triangles attached with
two bearing rollers were attached to a rigid
reaction wall. This system was then attached to the
side of the top steel beam.
LVDT 3
LVDT 4
Fig.5 Locations of LVDTs on the specimen
2.4 Instrumentation
Fig.5 shows the location of different LVDTs
attached to the specimen. Lateral deformation at
the top, mid-height, and bottom of the wall is
measured by three LVDTs; LVDT 1, LVDT 2 and
LVDT 3, respectively. One LVDT is used to
measure the unlikely horizontal sliding of the base
slab (LVDT 4). Two LVDTs (LVDT 5 and 6) are
installed at the boundary elements to measure the
vertical deformation of the boundary. Two further
LVDTs (LVDT 7 and 8) inclined at 45° are
installed in the lower region of the wall – close to
the base – to measure diagonal shear deformations.

Displacement (mm)
Two more LVDTs (LVDT 9 and 10) are attached
to the upper steel beam to measure the sway of the
shear wall at the top. Then two other LVDTs were
installed at the position of the first two cracks to
measure the crack width during testing.

The foregoing system of measurements made it No. of cycles

possible to estimate the flexural, shear, and sliding Fig.6 Sequence of loading displacement
components of the wall displacements, as
discussed in following section. These estimates
were also based on a series of strain gauge
measurements at various positions along the Concrete crushing
reinforcing bars. Additional strain gauges were
attached to measure the concrete surface strain.

2.5 Loading
For the axial load, this load is slowly increased to
the maximum value (840 kN) then maintained at
this value throughout the testing. The value of the
axial load was calculated according to a
compressive stress equals to 0.07 fc’.

As the effect of loading history is not a variable in

the testing, the typical procedure of applying
quasi-static reversed loading until failure was used.
Displacement control was used throughout the test. Fig.7 Crack pattern and failure mode
The displacement was applied in two cycles at the
same amplitude with increments of 2 mm up to
first cracking (around 10 mm), followed by
increment of 5 mm up 50 mm, then increments of
10 mm to failure. A typical sequence of
displacement cycles is shown in Fig.6.

3. ANALYSIS OF RESULTS

3.1 Crack Pattern and Failure Mode

The cracking pattern at the end of the test is shown
in Fig.7. The failure mode of the wall was as
expected. The wall started with flexural cracks,
followed by shear cracks. The first flexural crack Fig.8 Concrete crushing
occurred at the lower part of the wall at
approximately 120kN. The cracks were horizontal
within the length of the boundary elements.
Flexural cracks extended to about two thirds of the
height of the wall (2/3 lw). Flexure cracks were
followed by shear cracks in the web of the wall.
The inclination of the shear cracks was quite
higher in the top part than that of the cracks at the
bottom part. With cycling to increased
deformations, the rhomboidal pieces of concrete
between the intersecting cracks gradually
deteriorated and spalling of concrete cover
occurred at both sides of boundary elements. Fig.9 GFRP longitudinal bar rupture
Thereafter, a major horizontal crack at about 200
mm from the base was clearly evident. A
significant loss of strength, leading to failure, was
observed when concrete deteriorated in most

Load (kN)
heavily stressed parts of the boundary elements
close to the base (Fig.8). Stirrups were cut and
rupture of longitudinal GFRP bars in the boundary
element and web occurred under compression
(Figs.9,10).

Horizontal displacement at top of wall (mm)

Fig.11 Lateral load-displacement response

78% of ultimate load

Load (kN)

Fig.10 GFRP stirrups cut

3.2 Load –Deflection Response

Lateral load-displacement results, as shown in
Fig.11, demonstrate a general similarity to steel
reinforced shear wall behavior. Mid-height walls
generally produce hysteresis curves that are more
pinched and exhibit less energy dissipation than
would similar walls with a high aspect ratio. The
unloading/ reloading curves seem to demonstrate
linearity depending on GFRP behavior. The
reloading branches followed a similar loading path
but at a lower loading stiffness, resulting in lower
peak strength. The unloading path shape seems to
be dependent on the strain at the onset of
unloading. The load-displacement curves indicated
that the first excursion of a new displacement level
followed the loading path of the second excursion
of the previous displacement amplitude. This
suggested that additional cycles at a specific
displacement level would produce negligible
damage to that experienced by the first unloading-
reloading cycle.
Stiffness (kN/m)
Elongation of boundary element (mm)
Fig.12 Elongation of boundary elements
The maximum elongation in the boundary element
was 13.3 mm (Fig.12). It is observed that the crack
width with GFRP reinforcement is less than the
crack width experienced in steel reinforced shear
walls. This can be due to yielding of the steel
which causes a large crack width.
3.3 Stiffness
The performance in terms of stiffness of the shear
wall is shown in Fig.13. It was found that the
stiffness is gradually decreased without any abrupt
change even in region of residual strains (at 78%
ultimate load) or at ultimate load.
30000
25000

20000
Two LVDTs monitored the elongation of the
15000
boundary elements. This result is used to
determine the extent of cracking and deformation 10000
of flexural reinforcement. In all cycles, the
5000
elongation demonstrated recovery, except from
about 78% of the ultimate load (Fig.12). This is an 0
indication of elastic behavior of the specimen as 0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035
Drift angle (rad.)
the displacement was not accumulating but rather
diminishing with increased lateral displacement. Fig.13 Performance in term of stiffness
 3.4 Deformability and Energy Dissipation
Deformability is an essential property of shear
walls under reversed loads, including the ability to
sustain large deformations and absorb energy by
hysteretic behavior. In previous studies on RC
shear walls, when a structure or element does not
exhibit a clear yield point, it was necessary to go
back to the concept of energy absorption and
dissipation capacity. The energy dissipation may
be evaluated by calculating the area enclosed by
the hysteresis loops of the load-displacement
curve. The accumulative energy dissipation is then
calculated as the sum of the area enclosed by all
previous hysteresis loops (Fig.14).
Cumulative energy dissipation (J)
Displacement
Fig.14 Cumulative energy dissipation (J)
A more suitable means to compare energy
dissipation with other researches in RC shear walls,
is the energy ratio. The energy ratio denotes the
ratio of the dissipated energy to the introduced
energy (Fig.15). The latter corresponds to the area
below the graph of the force-displacement
relationship. So, the introduced energy has to be
calculated for each half-cycle. The energy ratio
was found to be equal to 0.35. The energy ratio
reported by other researchers on steel reinforced
shear walls [10] shows energy ratios equal to
approximately 0.60.
Dissipated
energy
Load (kN)
Introduced
energy
Horizontal displacement at top of wall (mm)
Fig.15 schematic of calculating energy ratio
The shear wall specimen achieved a maximum
drift equal to 3.1%, which is close to the ultimate
drift that may be achieved by medium rise steel
reinforced shear walls. The mean drift value in
many design codes is taken in the range 1.5-2%,
which can be considered when designing an FRP
shear wall. The ultimate drift in medium rise steel
reinforced shear wall is 4% which is usually
admitted in seismic evaluation in order to limit
damage of the non-structural elements, [4,11].
5.6 Stability
It was essential to monitor twisting of the
specimen due to a torsionally weak wall section.
Using two LVDTs placed on both ends at the top
of the wall, the twisting was measured. No
instability problems were noticed during testing
and negligible twisting occurred with slight
differences in displacement.
As a conclusion, with the simplest definition of
deformability; the capability of sustaining a high
proportion of their initial strength under large
deformations, a shear wall reinforced with GFRP
may satisfy considerably ductility/deformability
requirements. This is because this shear wall
behaves in an elastic manner causing negligible
residual deformations which causes degradation in
strength. It is worth mentioning that the good
confinement of the concrete in the boundary
element played a great role in increasing the
ductility of the wall.
6. CONCLUSIONS
On the basis of results obtained from this
experiment on a mid-rise shear wall reinforced
with GFRP bars with a moderate reinforcement
ratio, and from calculating the strength, stiffness,
and ductility of such a shear wall, it can be
concluded that the shear wall reinforced with
GFRP may be qualified for resisting lateral
loadings due to the following findings;
(1) The experimental shear wall specimen has
shown insignificant strength degradation and
a reasonable stability of stiffness during
reversed cyclic loading.
(2) The failure mechanism of the wall was as
expected. As a typical medium-rise shear
wall, the wall started with flexural cracks,
followed by shear cracks. Then the failure
was flexural compression with a major
flexure crack associated with rupture in the
 GFRP vertical bars.
(3) Negligible residual strain is experienced up
to 78% of the ultimate load.
(4) The FRP shear wall experienced less crack
width than that experienced in steel
reinforced shear wall due to the absence of
yielding in the FRP bars.
(5) The shear wall reinforced with FRP achieved
a drift equal to 3.1%, which is near the limits
of steel reinforced shear walls.
(6) The good confinement of the concrete played
a great role in increasing the ductility of the
wall.
However, more experimental tests and analytical
studies are needed to further validate the present
findings and to study the effect of different
reinforcement ratios on the performance of shear
walls reinforced with FRP bars.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors wish to express their gratitude and
sincere appreciation to the Canada Research Chair
in Advanced Composite Materials for Civil
Structures for funding this research project and the
technical staff of the structural lab in the
Department of Civil Engineering at the University
of Sherbrooke.
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