Hysteretic performance of foam-infilled corrugated FRP-steel sandwich shear wall

Abstract

A new foam-infilled corrugated carbon fiber reinforced polymer (FRP)-steel sandwich shear wall (CFSSW) is proposed for steel frame structures subjected to severe wind or seismic loadings. To reduce the excessive out-of-plane buckling deformation of conventional steel plate shear wall (SPSW), corrugated FRP laminates are fixed on both sides of the steel plate (SP). Moreover, to further improve the hysteretic behavior of the shear wall, PET foam is chosen as filler between the corrugated FRP laminates and the steel plate. Three, 1/3 scaled, single-storey shear wall specimens were built by using, as wallboard, the flat steel plate, the steel plate with corrugated FRP laminates (VCP) and the foam-infilled corrugated FRP-steel sandwich plate (VCSP). Experimental tests were carried out under low-cycle horizontal loading to study their shear performance. The results show that the CFSSW structure exhibited clear stress development pattern and stable energy dissipation capacity. Only using FRP corrugated plates as buckling-restraining components, the initial stiffness, ultimate bearing capacity and cumulative energy dissipation of conventional steel plate shear wall can be improved by 22.01%, 13.93% and 49.07%, respectively. The contribution of the infilled PET foam allowed to increase the initial stiffness, bearing capacity and energy dissipation of 28.17%, 36.39% and 105.93%, respectively. Besides, with the restraining effect of only FRP corrugated laminates or both FRP and infilled PET foam, the maximum out-of-plane displacements of the steel plate under shear force were reduced by 67.9% and 92.1%, respectively. Moreover, PET foam can help FRP laminates to effectively bear the shear forces and increased the ultimate shear capacity to 5.9% higher than nominal ultimate shear capacity of the steel plate.