Seismic Performance of Steel Plate-Reinforced Concrete Composite Shear Wall

In tall buildings the reinforced concrete (RC) shear wall is one of the predominant structural components used to resist lateral loads induced by earthquakes around the world. Previous research demonstrated that shear walls displayed a sudden loss in lateral capacity due to the wall corner and web crushing in the plastic zone. In addition, it was found that large shear distortions in shear walls may lead to a low energy dissipation capacity. For this reason, some steel-RC composite shear walls have been developed and indicated to mitigate most disadvantages of RC shear walls. The structural members studied herein are steel plate-reinforced concrete composite shear walls (SPRCW) by numerical analysis methods. The primary parameters vary in the axial load ratio, the ratio of steel plate and the ratio of web reinforcement in RC shear wall. Numerical analytical results indicate that, compared with the conventional RC shear walls, SPRCW has an evident improvement in the lateral load carrying capacity and ductility, especially in the energy dissipation capacity. In addition, the axial load ratio and the ratio of steel plate have more significant effects on the ductility and carrying capacity. The ratio of web reinforcement of RC wall has negligible effects on the component performance, but it would be still required to provide lateral support to the concrete and embedded steel plate.