Experimental study of a modifiable design of precast concrete shear walls

Abstract A novel design for precast concrete walls, referred to as modifiable concrete walls, has been developed to address the challenges of creating new openings in existing load‐bearing and stabilizing concrete shear walls. A modifiable wall element consists of two zones: a frame zone and a flexible zone. The flexible zone can be removed to create an opening in the wall, for example, when the function of the building changes and a new floor plan is needed. To minimize carbon emissions from concrete and reinforcement production, the flexible zone consists of low‐strength concrete and a low amount of reinforcement. This paper presents an experimental study of the structural behavior of modifiable concrete walls subjected to in‐plane loading. The experimental campaign comprised four full‐scale tests of modifiable wall elements investigating the influence of repeated loading and monotonic loading to failure. The experimental study mainly focused on the load‐carrying capacity, the failure modes, the interface between the two zones, and the crack development in the flexible zone. The results demonstrate a structural behavior comparable to traditional monolithic wall elements, rather than a behavior as a frame with disconnected infill, and the low‐strength flexible zone contributed significantly to the load‐carrying capacity. For the tested wall elements, a carbon footprint of 41% lower than that of a comparable conventional concrete wall was found, highlighting the potential to lower the environmental impact of wall structures while offering the advantage of being modifiable for future adaptability.