EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON THE SEISMIC BEHAVIOR OF RC SHEAR WALLS IN A SIMULATED ACID ENVIRONMENT

To investigate the seismic behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) shear walls corroded in the environment of an acid rain, six corroded RC shear wall specimens with a shear-span ratio of 2.14 were subjected to accelerated corrosion in a simulated acid environment. The quasi-static tests were carried out, and the seismic behavior of RC shear walls was obtained under different axial compression ratios and degrees of erosion. The results reveal that the precipitated crystals, eroded holes and exposed aggregates appeared on the surface of the RC shear wall concrete due to the combined erosion of H⁺ and SO₄²⁺ in the simulated acid solution, and that the erosion phenomenon was severer with the prolongation of the corrosion. With the increase in the degree of erosion, the horizontal cracks at the bottom of the wall appeared earlier and the spacing between the cracks was larger, the crack width became wider, and the strength, deformation capacity and energy dissipation capacity of the specimens degraded to varying extents. As the axial compression ratio increased, the cracking load, yielding load and peak load of the wall were increased, the crack development was slowed down, but the deformation capacity and energy dissipation capacity of the specimens decreased continuously and the peak point shear deformation and its proportion of total deformation decreased.