Repairable Modular Structural-Architectural Shear Walls

This paper introduces a new modular shear wall system designed for replaceability and resilience after extreme loading as well as architectural appeal. The walls are called tessellated structural-architectural (TeSA) walls because they consist of interlocking tiles (modules) with repetitive shapes (tessellations) and are intended to satisfy both structural and architectural demands. In TeSA systems, tile discontinuities may be able to contain damage within discrete units. This can facilitate quicker structural repair and reoccupation, and reduction of ensuing financial losses from service interruptions. Tiles of TeSA systems can be interlocking in one or two directions and can incorporate self-centering post-tensioning. This study focuses on documenting and quantifying damage in TeSA shear walls with tiles interlocking in one direction based on (1) laboratory tests performed on walls and (2) finite element modeling of TeSA walls. The considered TeSA walls consisted of reinforced concrete tiles and had self-centering post-tensioning. The interlocking tiles did not need mechanical connections to adjacent tiles. Wall damage was quantified in terms of the number of damaged tiles as observed through testing and obtained through analyses. Finite element analyses of the TeSA shear wall were performed in open-source analysis software (OpenSees). Static pushover analyses were performed to obtain force-displacement relationship and ensuing damage. A framework for calculating probability of damage at salient drifts is presented considering uncertainties in tile-interface properties, modeling approach, and applied loading. The 1-D interlocking TeSA wall had a 9% probability of no damage and 91% probability of slight damage at the drift of 0.87%. The framework can be used to generate fragility functions for the TeSA wall.