City Research Online

Abstract

Reinforced concrete (RC) walls are inevitably subjected to accidental impacts during their service life, which may lead to severe damage or collapse. However, the investigation about the impact resistance of RC shear walls is limited. And the influence of boundary elements on the impact dynamic responses of RC shear walls is unclear. To address this gap, this study novelly conducted a pendulum impact test on RC shear walls with boundary elements to investigate the dynamic response and failure mechanism. Five specimens with boundary elements were designed for experimental research and numerical simulation. The main design variables included boundary element, wall height, impact location, and drop height. The experimental results indicated that the inclusion of boundary elements reduced the peak displacement by 46.6%. Reducing the wall height from 1800 mm to 1200 mm decreased peak displacement by 36.9%. Increasing the impact height from 1.5 m to 2.5 m increased peak impact force by 17.9% and extended the overall response time by 117%. Finite element models were established using LS-DYNA to conduct a numerical study. After validation, the comprehensive parametric research was performed. The results show that increasing the axial compression ratio (μ = N/(f<inf>c</inf>‧A)) from 0.1 to 0.5 increased peak impact force by 6.0% and reduced peak displacement by 35.4%. Compared to impact mass, impact velocity has a greater influence on the displacement difference between the wall's central and edge positions. Increasing wall width decreases the contribution of boundary elements to impact resistance. When the wall width exceeds 1200 mm, the influence of boundary elements can be negligible.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2026, Elsevier. This is the accepted manuscript of an article published by Elsevier. Please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions for information on re-use.
Publisher Keywords:	Dynamic response, Experimental study, Impact loading, Numerical simulation
Subjects:	T Technology > TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General) T Technology > TH Building construction
Departments:	School of Science & Technology School of Science & Technology > Department of Engineering
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

Export

Downloads