Numerical Simulation Methods for Nonlinear Mechanical Behaviors of Confined Prestressed Hollow Core Wall Panels

Concrete prefabrication techniques have been popularized and utilized in building construction industry for years. To further improve the construction efficiency and quality for low-rise buildings, a prestressed hollow core wall system is proposed. Nonlinear mechanical behaviors of such a structural system are strongly determined by the occurrence timing and order of splitting and sliding of joints as well as cracking of concrete wall panels. In this paper, a detailed finite element model was developed in ANSYS to provide a tool for investigating the seismic behaviors of prestressed hollow core wall structures. Contact elements were applied to simulate the interaction between material interfaces. Techniques including coupling of degrees of freedom of overlapped nodes and deactivation of concrete elements were adopted, along with restart analysis to simulate nonlinear mechanical behaviors of the structural system. The developed modeling method was verified by experimental test results and was shown to accurately predict the global and local behaviors such as failure modes and load bearing capacities of precast hollow core walls. Pros and cons of the proposed simulation method were summarized, and suggestions were provided so as to improve the accuracy and versatility of this method to predict the global seismic behaviors of prestressed hollow core wall structures.