Low-Damage Rocking Precast Concrete Cladding Panels: Design Approach and Experimental Validation

This paper presents the development (concept, design, detailing, and fabrication) and experimental validation of a novel low-damage precast concrete cladding panel system that can accommodate significant inter-story drift demand through the rocking mechanism of the panels facilitated by smartly designed connections between the panels and the structural members. Two adjacent in-plane panels separated by ‘one-stage’ sealant joint were subjected to in-plane quasi-static cyclic drifts. The cladding system suffered no damage until 1.92% inter-story drift when the sealant tearing occurred. Furthermore, comparison with the seismic performance of traditional panel connections, reported in the literature, also demonstrated the system’s significantly improved seismic resilience.