Characteristics of Shear Wall Retrofit Effect with Different Retrofitting Method

Recently, for more demands of the economical benefits and environmental conservation, many engineers prefer to choose remodeling. In these cases, artificial openings are unavoidable to make house wider, and this will degrade wall strength and stiffness by losing effective wall section and it may cause the weakening of system capacity. So these damaged shear walls need to be retrofitted by additional materials or members. In this research, four specimens were tested to find out the capacity of the damaged wall and the retrofitted wall. The artificially damaged wall was prestressed by tendons to improve the shear capacity of the wall, and the other walls were retrofitted by adding steel plate at the surface for the same purpose. Consequently, these retrofitted walls showed more capacity in shear and flexural corresponding to strength and stiffness. Especially, the wall with steel plate showed ductile behavior after ultimate strength and the prestressed wall had more stiffness than prototype wall which had no retrofit.