Performance of steel–concrete composite walls with recycled aggregate concrete under low-velocity lateral impact loading

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact-resistant behaviours of steel–concrete (SC) composite walls experimentally and numerically, which consist of two outer steel plates and infilled recycled aggregate concrete (RAC). Totally eight SC walls were designed and fabricated with different coarse recycled aggregate (CRA) content and steel plate thicknesses. Drop-hammer impact testing was first performed to obtain the failure mode, impact force and deformation. Test results indicated that the impact resistance behaviour of SC walls enhanced considerably with a decrease in CRA content. The tie bars combined with studs were effective to avoid the separation of steel plate from the concrete core. Afterwards, the finite element (FE) models were developed and calibrated, and then used to obtain more information on the full-range motion response, development of stress and strain, and energy absorption. In addition, the influences of different parameters, including the CRA content, material strength, steel plate ratio, tie-bar spacing, impact energy and axial load ratio on the impact resistance performance were assessed. Finally, the displacement response of SC composite walls with RAC was predicted using single-degree of freedom (SDOF) approach.