Abstract
Steel-plate composite (SC) walls consist of exterior steel faceplates that are anchored to the concrete infill using steel headed stud anchors (or shear studs). The steel faceplates are connected to each other using tie bars that are also embedded in the concrete infill. SC walls are being used in the third generation of nuclear power plants and are also being considered for future small modular reactor designs. This paper focuses on the out-of-plane flexural behavior and design of SC walls. The out-of-plane flexural behavior was evaluated experimentally by conducting one-way bending tests on beam specimens that were representative of strips taken in the longitudinal and transverse directions of full-scale SC walls. This paper discusses the fundamental out-of-plane flexural behavior of SC walls, and presents the experimental database of out-of-plane flexural tests conducted on SC beam specimens in Japan, S. Korea, China and the US. The database includes SC beam specimens tested using different loading configurations, and considering different parameters such as shear span-to-depth ratio, steel faceplate thickness (reinforcement ratio), stud anchor spacing, and presence of faceplate stiffeners. The flexural capacities obtained from the tests are compared with nominal strengths calculated using appropriate equations in applicable design codes from Japan, S. Korea and the US. These comparisons indicate that the design code equations estimate the out-of-plane flexural strength of SC walls conservatively and with reasonable accuracy. Strength reduction factors (ϕ) are calculated by conducting reliability analyses, and found to be similar to the ones used for tension-controlled reinforced concrete flexural members in the ACI code.
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