Seismic Performance of Reinforced Concrete Wall with Superelastic Shape Memory Alloy Rebar

The superelastic shape memory alloy (SMA) rebar can significantly improve the seismic performance of reinforced concrete (RC) structures. This study was motivated from a blind prediction contest of a full-scale 7-storey RC shear wall building at the University of California, San Diego. A finite element (FE) analysis was conducted to investigate the seismic performance of RC shear wall with the application of SMA rebar. The SMA rebar was applied at the plastic hinge location of the shear wall only and the steel rebar was used for all other sections. The seismic performance of shear wall was evaluated by performing incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) using 13 ground motions. The seismic demand was recorded in terms of inter-storey drift ratio until the full collapse of the building. The safety of the wall was measured in terms of collapse margin ratio (CMR) explicitly considering the uncertainty. The results show that the SMA rebar significantly improved the performance of the shear wall building and yielded higher CMR as compared to the conventional RC building.