Truss spacing on innovative composite walls under compression

Abstract

Double skin steel-concrete composite walls offer structural merits over conventional reinforced concrete walls in terms of high strength, good ductility and convenience for construction. The stability of the external steel faceplates is significantly influenced by the types of internal mechanical connectors and the ratio of connector spacing to plate thickness. In this paper, a new type of steel truss was proposed as the fastener to connect the two faceplates. Compressive tests were conducted on three full-scaled composite walls with different truss spacing. The structural response of the walls was comprehensively discussed in terms of failure modes, load-axial displacement response, buckling stress, stiffness, ductility, strength index, load versus out-of-plane displacement response, and load-strain curves. The influences of truss spacing on key parameters were explored in details. The test results showed that the truss spacing could considerably affect the buckling shapes, load-carrying capacity, stiffness and ductility of the specimens.