Study on Vertical Dowel Connections in Precast Walls

Precast concrete wall connections using dowels are becoming more popular and effective these days due to their ease of installation and cost. In this study, one-third scale models of slender and intermediate precast walls with dowel connections and monolithic concrete walls were tested experimentally and numerically under lateral cyclic loads. The experiments on precast walls and monolithic walls were conducted on a loading frame of capacity 20 T and the cyclic loads were applied until the failure of the wall specimens. The numerical studies on walls were carried out using Abaqus.cae software, and the same cyclic loads were applied. The responses such as ultimate load, displacement, cracking pattern, ductility, and energy dissipation capacity of precast walls were compared. The results obtained from the numerical investigation proved to be effective in simulating the actual behavior of the studied precast and monolithic walls, thereby reducing the burden of doing physical tests on a huge number of precast wall specimens.