No abstract

Unstiffened steel plate walls (SPWs) are prone to buckling in practical engineering and will invariably be subjected to vertical loads. The use of stiffeners can improve the buckling behavior of thin plates. Considering the effect of the torsional stiffness of C-shaped stiffeners, the elastic buckling of the diagonally stiffened steel plate wall (DS-SPW) under combined shear and non-uniform compression is investigated. The interaction curves for the DS-SPW under combined action are presented, as well as a proposed equation for the elastic buckling coefficient. In addition, the effects of the stiffener’s flexural and torsional stiffness on the elastic buckling stress were investigated, and the threshold stiffness formulae were proposed. The results show that the interaction curve of the DS-SPW under combined shear and non-uniform compression is approximately parabolic. The critical buckling stress of the DS-SPW can be increased by increasing the stiffener’s torsional-to-flexure stiffness ratio and the non-uniform compression distribution factor, while the buckling stress can be decreased by increasing the non-uniform compression-to-shear ratio. Simultaneous action of shear and axial compression will increase the threshold stiffness by approximately 40% when compared to the plate under pure shear action. Therefore, the safety threshold stiffness formula is suggested, considering the combined action of shear and non-uniform compression.

The paper proposes partially connected steel plate shear walls, in which the infill plates and frames are connected by discretely distributed fish plates at the corners and at the centers. The high lateral resistance of a steel plate shear wall has led to its widespread use in the design of structural shear resistance. In this paper, finite element models of the partially connected steel plate shear walls are established by the finite element method, and the effect of the different partial connections on the shear strength is firstly investigated. Moreover, the variation of the shear strength with the plate-to-frame connectivity ratio is analyzed numerically, and the effect of the connectivity ratio on the development of the tensile field is studied. Based on the numerical analysis results, the effect of the connectivity ratio on shear strength is evident at low levels. When the connectivity ratio is over 80%, the shear strength of the partially connected steel plate shear wall can reach 95% of that of the fully connected steel plate shear wall. When the connection ratio is at a low level, the advantages of the central connection on the shear strength of the structures are higher than those with corner connections. Furthermore, the fitting formula for the partially connected steel plate shear wall is obtained by changing the connectivity ratio and width-to-height ratio of the examples, which can predict the shear capacity of the partially connected steel plate shear wall with different partial connections.

Assembly buildings are an important direction for the future development of the construction field. They can be prefabricated in the factories and then assembled on-site, which significantly improves construction efficiency. The shear walls are the most important lateral force-resisting elements in building structures, and at this stage, there are more and more studies on the prefabricated shear wall. In this paper, a new composite shear wall structure is proposed. The composite shear wall is a part of a prefabricated building, which is prefabricated into a single shear wall unit in the factory. During the construction, the upper and lower prefabricated shear wall units are connected by the plug-in. The design methods of splicing connection are given for the design of this composite shear wall structure. Eleven composite wall models under different parameters are established by using the finite element method, especially the fine modeling of the upper and lower connection parts. Compared with the conventional composite shear wall model of the same dimensions, the mechanical behaviors of the two models are similar. In the simulation of cyclic loading, the new composite shear wall shows good ductility and energy dissipation capacity, and also meets the established requirements of building seismic performance. Therefore, it can be concluded that the new prefabricated composite shear walls have good development prospects and application values.

In this paper, five new joints of special-shaped double-web steel-reinforced concrete (SDSRC) columns connected with steel beams are designed. The load-displacement curves, joint yield states and damage forms of the beam ends of the five joints under monotonic loading with the same axial pressure ratio are investigated. Additionally, the hysteresis performance, strength and stiffness degradation under cyclic loading are studied. The results show that the bearing capacity of joints with studs can increase by approximately 10%. Since the arrangement of multiple rows of studs at the connection between the beam web and the column has better force transfer performance and concrete synergy behavior, the failure modes of these joints are plastic hinge formation at the end of the beam, satisfying strong column-weak beam requirements. Moreover, these joints exhibit good ductility and energy dissipation capacity under cyclic loading, and their strength and stiffness gradually decrease. In contrast, joints with single-row studs or without studs at the connection between beam web and column exhibit beam flange buckling rather than full-section plastic hinge formation at the beam end, and tensile deformation of column web is larger. Although these joints exhibit good ductility performance, their energy dissipation capacity is weaker than that of joints with multiple rows of studs at the beam web-column connection.