Experimental and Analytical Assessment of Flexural Behavior of Cantilevered RC Walls Subjected to Impact Actions

Abstract

Reinforced concrete (RC) impact-resistance barriers, such as rockfall barriers, often consist of a cantilever RC wall, which is expected to experience flexural bending under impact loading to resist the associated design actions. In order to investigate the flexural response behavior of an RC cantilever wall, a large-scale experiment was carried out on a fixed base RC cantilevered barrier wall measured 1.5 m in height, 3 m in length, and 0.23 m in thickness. Two torpedo shaped steel impactors with a mass of 280 and 435 kg were released from controlled heights ranging from 0.2 to 1.4 m in pendulum style to strike the top of the wall. The first half of this paper presents an overview, findings, and results of this large-scale, original experimental work. The second half of the paper presents a displacement-based analytical model, which can be used to assess and determine important design parameters for cantilever RC barrier walls of this nature, including deflection demand and material strains. Systematic comparisons of the experimental results and the proposed analytical model demonstrate the accuracy and reliability of the proposed model for assessing cantilevered RC barrier walls subject to impact actions.