Abstract

Industrialized reinforced concrete (RC) systems have become a solution widely used in developing countries as an efficient alternative system for housing construction, compared with traditional masonry infilled frames and reinforced masonry systems. These systems provide high efficiency in construction through an appropriate planning of activities, budget, staff, equipment and materials, generating a fast and effective massive production process. This study aims at optimizing the construction time by replacing the welded-wire steel meshes with fiber-reinforced concrete (FRC) in the web of the walls without affecting the serviceability and seismic perfor-mance of low-rise housing. Eight full-scale isolated RC structural walls (one with conventional welded-wire steel, three with steel fiber and four with hybrid fibers) were designed and tested under in-plane quasi-static cyclic loads. The parameters evaluated are the characteristics of the fiber reinforced concrete mixture (volume fraction of fibers and type of fibers) and the amount of reinforcement at the boundary elements. The paper discusses the measured performance of structural walls in terms of failure modes, hysteresis curves, and contribution of fibers to shear strength. Based on the test results, recommendations are presented for FRC walls in order to achieve a lateral performance similar to that of conventional steel reinforced concrete wall for low-rise housing.