Seismic Behavior of Coupled Steel Plate and Concrete Composite Wall System

A novel type of coupled wall system is proposed in this research program, where two or more steel plate and reinforced concrete (SPRC) composite walls are joined by steel coupling beams. Compared with the conventional steel plate or reinforced concrete coupled walls, the proposed coupled SPRC composite walls can possess much higher axial load carrying and overturning moment capacities. However, relevant research is still rare largely due to the difficulty of conducting both experimental and analytical studies of such complicated coupled system. To investigate the seismic behavior of coupled SPRC composite walls, three 1/4 scaled subassembly models, consisting of one and a half story of wall piers and one cantilever steel coupling beam with half-span length, were designed, constructed and tested under constant axial compression and lateral cyclic reversed loading. Test results showed that the axial load ratio has little effect on the load carrying capacity and energy dissipation capacity of the test models. The ductility behavior would be weakened with the increase of the axial load ratio. The bending to shear ratio of steel coupling beam had no obvious influence on the load carrying capacity, but positively correlated with the energy dissipation capacity and ductility. The finite element program ABAQUS was used to establish finite element models, and the simulated results were compared with the test results, which were in satisfactory agreement. Parametric analysis was conducted to further study the influence of bending to shear ratio.