Post-earthquake performance and damage evaluation of self-centering shear wall with replaceable devices

Self-centering structures have been demonstrated to be an effective method by which to improve seismic resilience. Most related research is focused on the seismic performance of self-centering structures without initial damage, whereas the post-earthquake performance of structures, which is significant for their repair and operation, is less investigated. Based on this, this study aims to evaluate the post-earthquake behavior and explore the damage evolution of a novel self-centering shear wall with replaceable devices, including disc springs to apply restoring force and friction pads to dissipate energy. Cyclic loading tests were conducted on two intact self-centering shear walls to investigate their seismic performance in our previous studies, and limited damage was observed after the tests. Thus, in this study, cyclic loading was directly applied to the two damaged self-centering shear walls to obtain their post-earthquake performance. The results indicate that the damaged self-centering shear walls exhibited satisfactory seismic behavior; their bearing capacity was reduced at small drift ratios as compared to that of the intact specimens, whereas no decrease of their bearing capacity occurred even at a 3% drift ratio. Moreover, the damaged self-centering shear wall exhibited appreciable energy dissipation and self-centering capabilities, and the residual drift ratio was less than 0.5% at a 2.1% drift ratio. However, the damage at the bottom of the RC wall after the post-earthquake test was obvious, revealing that the novel self-centering RC shear wall would need to be repaired after several earthquakes. Therefore, two effective methods were further developed to improve the post-earthquake performance of the novel self-centering shear wall.