Behaviour of steel plate shear walls with different types of partially-encased H-section columns

Abstract Using the partially encased composite (PEC) columns is an efficient method for improving the behaviour of steel plate shear wall. The PEC column composes H-shape steel column, links connecting the flanges and concrete partially encased in the steel H-section. This paper reports an experimental study on the seismic behavior of the steel plate shear walls (SPSWs) with PEC columns under cyclic lateral loading. Two 1/3-scale single-bay, two-story specimens were constructed. The C-shape links and X-shape links with the inclined angle of 0° and 45° were adopted for the PEC columns of these two specimens respectively and constructed with similar steel consumption. The tests results show that the initial stiffness, maximum energy dissipation and ductility coefficient of the specimen with PEC column reinforced by X-shape links were respectively 35.78%, 13.60% and 15.20% higher than the one constructed by C-shape links. However, the bearing capacity of the two specimens was basically the same. Besides, parametric studies were conducted through numerical simulation so that the contribution of links and concrete can be evaluated. As a result, the concrete in the PEC column can help improve initial stiffness, bearing capacity and ductility of SPSW structure. The effect of links on improving the bearing capacity of SPSW with PEC column is not significant. However, X-shape links are more effective than C-shape links in improving the bending-resistance capacity of the frame columns in SPSW structure and also help prevent the SPSW structure from forming spreaded fracture of outer flange at the column bottom. In general, the PEC columns with X-shape and C-shape links have different seismic behaviors and deserve further study.