Performance of precast short-leg concrete shear walls with insufficient splicing bar anchorage

Precast short-leg concrete shear walls with grouted sleeve splices (GSS) are widely used in residential construction. However, grouting defects have raised concerns due to their potential to cause rebar bond-slips, reduce connection strength, and impair overall structural performance. This study examines the impact of insufficient splicing rebar anchorage lengths in grouted sleeves through cyclic tests on three full-scale precast short-leg concrete shear walls, subjected to a normalized compression of 0.082. The specimens include one wall with defects on one side, one with defects on two sides, and a defect-free reference specimen. The anchorage length in defected sleeves was 4db, 50 % of the required length. All specimens experienced flexural failure, with defected walls showing a slightly more pronounced pinching effect on the hysteretic loops compared to the reference specimen. Although the stiffness degradation trends were similar across all walls, the load-carrying capacity of the defected walls was reduced by 4 % and 7 % for one-sided and two-sided defects, respectively. Furthermore, the displacement ductility values of 3.84 and 3.70 for the defected walls represent a 5 % and 10 % reduction in ductility compared to the reference specimen (4.05).