Experimental Research on the Influence of Axial Compression Ratio on the Performance of Reinforced Concrete Grid Walls

Prefabricated reinforced concrete walls have high lateral stiffness， low deformation capacity， and are prone to shear brittle failure. By regularly arranging openings on the wall， the failure modes of the wall under lateral force can be adjusted， and the ductility of the wall can be increased. Four reinforced concrete grid walls with opening dimensions of 200 mm × 500 mm and a shear span ratio of 0.7 were designed and manufactured in this study. Experimental investigations were conducted on the structural performance of the walls under transverse static loads and transverse cyclic loads under different axial compression ratios. The force mechanism， monotonic load-displacement curves， hysteresis curves， and skeleton curves of the walls were analyzed； the results reveled the two-stage failure mode of the grid wall， for which the internal connecting beams failed first and the inter-grid split columns failed later. The results showed that increasing the axial compression ratio from 0.1 to 0.35 increased the load-bearing capacity of the grid wall by 38%， reduced the ductility coefficient by 9.3% under reciprocating load. Moreover， in static tests， the rate of post-peak degradation in the bearing capacity of walls with different axial compression ratios was almost the same； by appropriately setting the grid of reinforced concrete walls， the project changed the failure mode of the walls and improved their ductility.