Experimental and numerical investigations of axially loaded RC walls restrained on three sides

Axially loaded reinforced concrete (RC) walls in tilt‐up structures can be supported top and bottom only by floors or roof structures. However, RC walls are often combined to form I‐, C‐, T‐, and L‐shapes to make efficient use of the building area in multi‐storey buildings. With these configurations, walls may also be laterally supported on either or both sides by interconnecting walls. While many researchers have investigated the behaviours of RC walls, either in one‐way action or two‐way action supported on four sides with and without openings, limited research has been conducted on two‐way action walls supported on three sides (TW3S). As such, this paper experimentally and numerically investigates the behaviour of TW3S walls. Details of the 12 half‐scale walls tested, including experimental setup, failure loads, crack patterns, and load‐deflection characteristics, are reported. In addition, the Finite Element Method using ABAQUS software for investigating the behaviour of TW3S walls is described in detail. Finally, due to the conservative nature of code design equations and there being limited available methods for predicting the ultimate load of TW3S walls with openings, a rigid‐plastic approach has been proposed in this study to evaluate the failure load of TW3S walls.