Parametric Study on Cyclic Behavior of Modular Assembly Composite Walls with Connection to Boundary Beam

This study focuses on the investigation of seismic performance of modular assembly composite shear wall (MACW) system, which is connected to boundary beams only. The finite element method is employed to establish the numerical model of the MACW system and experimental data is adopted to validate the simulation. To clearly show the seismic performance of the system, seven design parameters with 36 computational cases, including height-to-span and height-to-thickness ratios of steel plate, bolt spacing, spacing between the concrete plate and connection steel plate, thicknesses of the connection steel plate and concrete plate, and the number of composite wall modules, are discussed on mechanical property and energy dissipation capacity in details. The results show that ratios of height-to-span and height-to-thickness have a significant influence on mechanical bearing and energy dissipation properties in comparison to the other five parameters. Combining systematic seismic behaviors, such as hysteresis property, out-of-plane displacement, and equivalent damping ratio, the optimal values of the above seven parameters are recommended to be 2, 600, 100, 30, 8, 50, and 2 mm respectively. Stiffness ratios between the post-yield and initial stiffness of all the 36 models are mainly in the range of (2.6%, 5.5%).