Study on the performances of composite steel concrete structural shear walls under lateral loads

Abstract

This work is related to some investigations carried out on composite steel concrete structural shear walls with steel encased profiles subjected to vertical and horizontal loads, simulating the earthquake effects. The objective of this work was to investigate the influences which appear in the seismic behavior of a reinforced concrete wall, due to the replacement of the boundary reinforcements with an encased steel profile provided with the same tension capacity. An experimental program including six quasi–static cyclic tests on scaled models was carried out during this work. Five specimens were composite steel concrete elements, while one was a reinforced concrete wall. The variables of the experimental program were related to the steel encased elements shape, position and encasement level. The behavior of the composite specimens under lateral loads was similar with the behavior of the reinforced concrete shear wall. The performances of composite specimens in terms of stiffness, load bearing capacity, energy dissipation, ductility, over-strength and deformation capacity are similar in comparison with the performances of the reinforced of reinforced concrete wall. This observation implies that composite steel concrete walls are a possibility to achieve at least the same lateral resistance as a reinforced concrete wall with the same tension capacity of the boundary reinforcement.