Coupled Wall Test UW/UIUC - Photogrammetry Shear Strains

This video is the result of a project conducted by the University of Washington and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation through the NEES Research Program and by the Charles Pankow Foundation. Visit for more videos or for additional information on the project. The following video is a time-lapse video of a 1/3 scale, three story concrete coupled wall subassemblage tested at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s MUST-SIM nees facility in partnership with researchers at the University of Washington - Seattle. Moments, shears and axial loads were applied to the top of the third story simulating internal forces from a 10-story building subjected to the ASCE 7-05 lateral load distribution. Failure occurred abruptly in the toe of the compression piers at a lateral drift of approximately %. Strain fields were calculated from the data captured by the photogrammetric system. This system is comprised of nine high-resolution cameras which capture rigid body movements of paper targets adhered to the side of the specimen. The absolute values of the shear strains are shown only for strains within set limits of zero and six millistrain. Inaccuracies in the strain calculation at the tops of the piers are attributed to a lack of cameras used to capture rigid body displacements at those locations. This experiment is one of a series of eight tests of the Charles Pankow Foundation and NSF NEESR Collaborative Research Project for “Performance-Based Seismic Design of Concrete Walls.“ Researchers Laura Lowes(UW), Dawn Lehman(UW) and Dan Kuchma(UIUC) are the main investigators of this project. Video Created by: Jake Turgeon