Lateral Load Carrying Capacity of Concrete-filled Cold-formed Steel Shear Wall

Abstract

A new type of innovative composite shear wall (concrete-filled cold-formed steel shear wall or CFCSW) is proposed, composed of cold-formed channel sections arc-welded together by 20 mm length of welds and filled with concrete. The main study of the CFCSW focuses on the overall behavior, ultimate load capacity, stiffness and ductility. Three specimens of CFCSW with an aspect ratio of 1.0 are tested under lateral monotonic load. Three-dimensional finite element models are developed and benchmarked with the experimental results. The validated models are used to carry out parametric studies to determine the influence of the parameters on the performance of the CFCSW. The parameters are the height, steel plate thickness, weld spacing and concrete thickness of the CFCSW. The experimental and finite element modeling results indicate that increasing the weld spacing from 105 mm to 211 mm improves the stiffness, ductility and load carrying capacity, and similarly, providing holes inside the wall increases the stiffness, ductility and peak strength of the CFCSW. The ultimate capacity of the CFCSW is most influenced by changing the height of the wall and least influenced by varying the concrete thickness of the wall.