THE SEISMIC PERFORMANCE OF A REINFORCED CONCRETE SQUAT WALL WITH A PERMANENT PVC FORMWORK SYSTEM

摘要

The stay-in-place concrete forming technology made primarily from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) has already shown improvements in durability, maintenance, construction time, and water-tightness, when compared to traditional methods. In-plane dynamic testing was carried out on the PVC formwork system with the objective to determine its performance under seismic loading. Two reinforced concrete squat walls were built with the same amount of reinforcement, and only one of the walls with the permanent PVC formwork system. The walls were modified by placing openings in the middle to reduce their strength. A synthetic earthquake record, scaled to local code, was used for both specimens. The amplitude of this record was increased incrementally throughout the experiment and the results of the dynamic tests showed that, by comparison, the structure with the permanent PVC formwork was protected against spalling and had a greater lateral load capacity. In addition, there was a significant reduction of the amount of cracks on the surface of the tested specimen.