6. Conclusion
The seismic behavior of steel plate reinforced concrete composite shear wall is systematically investigated. A total of 16 SPRW specimens and 3 traditional RC walls with various parameters are designed, the corresponding low cyclic tests are implemented to study the seismic performance, including failure phenomena, failure mechanism, load carrying capacity, ductility and energy dissipation characteristics, etc. The key influence of some important parameters, e.g. aspect ratio, thickness of the wall and the steel plate, structural detailing, on the seismic behavior of SPRW is also analyzed based on the extensive experimental results. Finally, the hysteretic curve model and shearing capacity are generalized based on massive test data, and the design formula of shearing capacity is also proposed based on current design codes. The main conclusions are listed as follows: (1) Compared to RC shear walls, the load capacity and ultimate displacement of SPRWs are increased by 106.99% and 121.96%. The ductility index and equivalent viscous damping coefficient are increased by 25.02% and 24.99% on average, respectively. SPRW has obvious better seismic performance than the traditional RC shear wall. (2) Thickness of the wall and thickness of the steel plate are the main factor with regard to bearing capacity. Concrete plays an important role in restraining the local buckling of the steel plate. A certain thickness of the steel plate can ensure ductility of the wall. The thickness of the wall is the most important parameter to increase deformability, ductility and energy dissipation capacity, followed by detailing and thickness of the steel plate. Compared with lateral ties, the structural detailing of shear studs on steel plates is more effective. (3) When designing the SPRW, the maximum shear of the wall section can be evaluated by the proposed equation shown in Section 5.2 in this paper.
