Evaluation of Softened Truss Model for Strength Prediction of Reinforced Concrete Squat Walls

Abstract

This paper evaluates the softened truss model and the softened strut-and-tie model for predicting shear strength of reinforced concrete squat walls. The prediction accuracy of analytical solutions is examined using the experimental data of 62 test shear walls available in the literature. It was found that the analytical solutions, which utilize the softening laws of cracked reinforced concrete under compression, can yield better estimations of shear strength. Further, the state of stresses in the web of a squat wall may be better assumed to be concentrated rather than uniformly distributed. The assumption of uniform distribution of stress of the softened truss model for squat walls causes some drawbacks. The upper bound solution of the softened truss model is found to generate unreasonably large horizontal clamping stresses, whereas the estimation of the lower bound solution is governed mainly by the yield of reinforcement, which is not the actual failure behavior of squat walls.