Concrete panel thickness demand for the design of composite steel plate shear wall

Abstract

Composite steel plate shear walls (C-SPWs) are composed of an infill steel plate and reinforced concrete encasements. With an adequate thickness, the concrete encasement can effectively prevent the premature buckling of the infill steel plate. Researchers have provided nonconservative concrete thickness demands through analyses of approximate elastic buckling, for which the analytical model is too simplistic to simulate C-SPW buckling. In this paper, the buckling of C-SPW is addressed using a nonlinear finite element method. To assist this method, a formula for the buckling strength of C-SPW is theoretically developed. Utilizing the results of nonlinear finite element analysis on C-SPW, the effects of concrete panel thickness, concrete elastic modulus, infill steel plate thickness, panel aspect ratio, and stud spacing on the infill steel plate buckling are analyzed, and the critical drift ratio corresponding to the buckling of the infill steel plate is obtained. According to the criterion that the C-SPW will not buckle until its drift ratio achieves the drift limit (0.4%), the minimum concrete panel thicknesses demands are captured from finite element analysis. Fitting these predicted minimum concrete thicknesses, an available formula is proposed for the concrete thickness demand in the design of C-SPW.