Experimental study of rectangular multi-partition steel-concrete composite shear walls

Multi-partition composite shear walls have the strong points, such as high load-carrying capacity, good ductility, excellent energy dissipation capacity and fast construction speed. Even if they were used in the buildings, there was a little research work on this kind of composite shear walls. To study the axial behavior and cyclic behavior of multi-partition composite shear walls, six axially loaded specimens were tested, and two specimens were tested under horizontal cyclic load. Through testing of specimens, the damage progression, failure mechanism, stiffness and energy dissipation of composite shear walls were investigated. The experimental results showed that this kind shear walls under axial load had high load-carrying capacity and good ductility. The steel section could confine the core concrete, whose capacity was higher than that the summation capacity of steel section and core concrete. The shear walls exhibited excellent energy dissipation ability under high axial load ratio. Because of the confinement of steel section, the specimen showed higher energy dissipation capacity with the increasing of axial load ratio. However, the ductility of the specimen under cyclic load decreased with the increasing of axial load ratio. The experimental results were compared with the calculated results calculated by EC4, AISC and CECS. The results showed that all design codes underestimated the axial compressive capacity of the specimens. For specimens subjected to cyclic load, the results based on EC4 were the nearest to the experimental results.