EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON THE SEISMIC PERFORMANCE OF FRAME-PRESTRESSED ROCKING WALL STRUCTURES

A new frame-prestressed rocking wall structure was presented in this paper, in which the foot area of the rocking wall was replaced by two rubber blocks. The wall was connected with the foundation by the embedded unbonded tendons and was connected to the columns of the frame with six I-shaped steel connectors. The seismic behavior of specimens including the failure mode, strength, stiffness degradation and energy dissipation capacity was studied through quasi-static tests of a frame specimen and a frame-prestressed rocking wall specimen. The results show that the deformation of the frame-prestressed rocking wall was effectively concentrated in the energy consumption connectors, while the damage to the ends of the beams and columns and the core area of beam-column joints was relatively light. The ultimate strength was greatly increased by 112.4% compared to the control frame. The hysteretic energy dissipation capacity was increased significantly, and the deformation of each story tended to be uniform to avoid story yielding mechanism. The I-type energy dissipation connectors had shown good ductility and deformability, which were replaceable and cheap. The combination of the replaceable components and the rocking wall structure was realized.