Seismic behaviour of recycled aggregate thermal insulation concrete (Ratic) shear walls

This study investigated recycled aggregate thermal insulation concrete (Ratic) containing glazed hollow beads. The study of ten shear walls investigated shear-span ratio, axial compression ratio, reinforcement ratio and concrete material type. Quasi-static tests were carried out to obtain the failure modes, load-displacement curves, skeleton curves, stiffness degradation and energy dissipation capacity of Ratic shear walls. Compared with shear walls made from normal concrete, the Ratic shear walls offered a slight improvement in bearing capacity and significant improvements in deformation and energy dissipation capacities. A finite-element model was developed and non-linear simulations of shear walls with the same parameters as in the quasi-static test were carried out using Ansys software. The internal stress and strain distributions of different concrete shear walls are intuitively shown in stress contour plots and the reliability of test results further verified. The paper proposes the calculation method of the fourfold line restoring force model used for the restoring force calculation of Ratic shear wall, which is validated by comparing with the test results.