Irreparable seismic damages were frequently observed on the bottom of code compliant reinforced concrete (RC) shear walls in major earthquakes. These damages have negative effect on the resilience of RC structures. As a superior substitute for the conventional RC wall, a plastic hinge-supported wall is proposed in this paper. It tries to distribute the bending moment and shear force to certain structural components so as to decouple the complex bending-shear mechanism. It becomes easy to determinate the precise demand of component design and realize a performance-based design and the strong shear-weak bending mechanism. Meanwhile, plastic damage can be concentrated on energy dissipation devices so as to improve the resilience of structures. To experimentally examine the seismic performance of plastic hinge-supported wall, three wall specimens were produced and tested quasi-statically. The results demonstrate that the Pin-supported Plastic Hinge Walls show a better hysteretic energy dissipation capacity comparing with the RC wall counterpart of the same strength, and the distribution of plastic damage can be controlled. In addition, the elastic-designed RC parts and connection measures show stable performance.
