X.M. Zhai1, Y. Z. Totoev2 and M.G. Stewart3
- Associate Professor, School of Civil Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology Harbin, Heilongjiang, 150090, China, xmzhai@hit.edu.cn
- Senior lecturer, Centre for Infrastructure Performance and Reliability, School of Engineering, The University of Newcastle Newcastle, NSW, 2308, Australia, Yuri.Totoev@newcastle.edu.au
- Professor, Centre for Infrastructure Performance and Reliability, School of Engineering, The University of Newcastle Newcastle, NSW, 2308, Australia, ,Mark.Stewart@newcastle.edu.au
ABSTRACT
A reinforced grouted concrete block wall/beam, composed of cast-in-place concrete beam and reinforced grouted block wall, is common in mixed retail/commercial and residential construction in China. Often the ground floor houses a shop and commercial storage and residential flats are built on the floors above. In such buildings the ground floor is built as a reinforced concrete (RC) frame with or without shear walls and the upper floors are built with walls of reinforced grouted concrete blocks. According to Chinese code, the RC beam depth to span ratio for wall/beam composition should be greater than or equal to 1/6 for seismic design. Compared to a RC beam with unreinforced masonry (URM) wall on top of it, the reinforced grouted concrete block wall/beam structure has greater stiffness. The higher stiffness can help reducing the cast-in-place RC beam depth to span ratio, and thus increase the height of the ground floor. In this paper, test results for six different wall/beam compositions are presented. The structural capacity, the load-deformation relationship, force-transferring path, and failure mode are examined. The experiments show that the reinforced block wall/beam acts like a deep beam. It was found that the RC beam depth to span ratio can be reduced from 1/6 to 1/10.5.
KEYWORDS: reinforced grouted concrete block, wall/beam, depth to span ratio
B8-1
