Strengthening of shear wall with high performance RC jacket

A new technique for the strengthening of existing R/C shear walls based on the application of thin high performance jackets is presented in this paper. The strengthening jacket is made of high performance concrete, having a compression resistance higher than 150 MPa, and reinforced by means of an high strength steel mesh. The experimental study is carried out on a 1:3 scale R/C wall, proportioned to resist the vertical loads only, and reinforced by means of a 15 mm thick high performance jacket. Cyclic loads of increasing magnitude are applied to the experimental shear wall up to collapse. The experimental results show the efficiency of the proposed strengthening solution. The strengthening jacked allow doubling the structure resistance, and the structure ductility is increased up to nine times the ductility of the unreinforced structure. The remarkable increase in the structure ductility is the result of the large deformability of the jacket and the absence of strain localization. © 2009 Taylor & Francis Group.