Seismic performance of high strength double steel plate concrete composite shear walls

With the development of high-rise buildings, requirements have been proposed for high resilience, construction efficiency and economic benefits. A double steel plate concrete (DSC) composite structure using high strength material is proposed to provide large bearing capacity and ductility despite the brittleness of the high strength materials. This paper concentrates on the seismic performance of a DSC composite shear wall using high strength steel and high strength concrete. T-shaped stiffeners were adopted to achieve the composite action between the steel plate and concrete. Experiments were conducted on three DSC composite shear walls subjected to axial compressive and lateral cyclic loads. The in-plane flexural behavior of the shear walls including the failure mode, the seismic performance, the deformation, and the strain distribution were analyzed. Then a three-dimensional finite element model (FEM) was established to numerically simulate the behavior of the specimen. The influence of the axial compressive ratio and the spacing of the stiffeners are preliminary investigated by the experiments, and then the results were expanded by the FEM method. Parameter analysis was conducted on the axial compressive ratio, the thickness of the web plate and the thickness of the flange plate. The effectiveness of the in-plane flexural performance of the DSC composite shear wall using high strength steel and high strength concrete is validated. The combination of the high strength steel and high strength concrete exhibited considerable flexural capacity and ductility. It is also found that the concrete in the concealed columns is uniaxially strengthened due to the confinement effect.