The ERIES-ALL4wALL project, “Smart ALLoys for WALLs,” aims to un-derstand and improve the seismic performance of reinforced concrete (RC) building core walls, which are poised to become increasingly vital as the global building stock is expected to double by 2060. This paper presents pre-liminary results and findings relative to the dynamic testing of two large-scale RC U-shaped core walls, which were tested in the National Laboratory for Civil Engineering (LNEC), in Lisbon. The first unit, UWS1, used conven-tional steel reinforcement, while the second (UWS2) incorporated largely-debonded iron-based shape memory alloy (FeSMA) rebars. The latter were heated via Joule effect to apply a pre-stress aiming at reducing residual dis-placements. The units were subjected to alternating uni- and bidirectional ground motions. This paper presents the full time-histories of the wall collar's relative displacements in both orthogonal directions, along with the corre-sponding torsional rotations. The article also examines the maximum and at-rest residual displacements, comparing them with those anticipated from qua-si-static reverse-cyclic tests. It concludes with a preliminary discussion of un-expected structural behavioral features of UWS2, which are attributed to elec-trical insulation deficiencies that led to difficulties with the resistive heating system in three of the four wall cross-sectional corners.
Almeida et al. (Wed,) studied this question.