Shear Performance of Large-Thickness Precast Shear Walls with Cast-in-Place Belts and Grouting Sleeves

Building industrialization has great significance for improving the efficiency of construction production, achieving the goal of energy saving and emission reduction, and promoting sustainable development. On the other hand, numerous thick wall structures with bulky dimensions and complex connection constructions have been applied into special engineering such as islands, tunnels, and deep sea projects. The precast structure is an open and complex system with a certain level of systematic risk for the whole life cycle. Moreover, structural mechanics and reliability, construction uncertainty, and resilience of precast thick wall structures still need to be revealed. For promoting the application of building industrialization to thick wall structures, nonlinear finite-element analyses on two types of large-thickness precast shear walls have been carried out based on original structural design specifications. The reinforcement connection configurations and the shear performance in terms of the load-displacement curve, lateral stiffness, ductility, energy dissipation capacity of shear walls with cast-in-place (CIP) belts, or grouting sleeves have been analyzed in detail. Numerical results show that the shear performance of two large-thickness precast shear walls is comparable to that of CIP walls. The relative error of the peak load is less than 10% for three specimens in flexural failure mode. The yield load of shear walls is relatively large and the stage between yield and failure is satisfactory. The shear performance of shear walls decreases slowly after reaching its peak value. Meanwhile, we have conducted the qualitative analysis of structural reliability for large-thickness precast shear walls in component production, quality inspection, wet work, and shear performance.