Coupled axial tension-flexure behavior of slender reinforced concrete walls

•Coupled axial tension-flexure tests were conducted on RC slender walls.•Axial tensile force levels influence failure modes of RC slender walls.•Axial tensile forces decrease effective flexural stiffness and strength of walls.•Design equations of flexure strength and stiffness of tensile RC walls are estimated.•The proposed refined model accurately estimates axial elongation of RC walls. Reinforced concrete (RC) walls in high-rise buildings, in particular wall piers that form part of a coupled or core wall system, may experience coupled axial tension-flexure loading when subjected to lateral demands. The seismic behavior of RC walls with various axial tensile forces was investigated by quasi-static tests on four RC slender walls subjected to the combined tension and flexure loading. The failure modes, strength and deformation capacity, effective flexural stiffness, and design equations are presented. The failure modes included flexural-sliding failure and flexural failure. The effective flexural stiffness and lateral strength of the walls significantly decreased as the axial tensile forces were increased. The ACI 318-14 and ASCE/SEI 41-13 code provisions overestimated the effective flexural stiffness of RC walls subjected to axial tension. Although equations proposed by Paulay & Priestley and Adebar et al. consider the influence of axial forces, they were not able to accurately predict the effective flexural stiffness of the RC wall specimens subjected to tensile forces. Both sectional analysis using XTRACT and JGJ 3-2010 (China) code equations provided accurate estimation of the flexural yield strength of walls. Finally, both a refined model and simplified equation were proposed to estimate the axial elongation for RC slender walls subjected to axial tensile force and cyclic lateral loading.