Investigation of Wood‐Steel Composite Shear Walls Behavioural Parameters

Abstract

Over the last few years, hybrid steel‐timber components and systems are enjoying increasing popularity in the construction sector, particularly in the case of multistorey timber buildings where significant benefits arise due to faster and safer on‐site erection, improved structural and seismic performance combined with minimized environmental impact. Most of these studies focus on steel frames with Cross‐laminated Timber (CLT) infills and hybrid steel‐timber joints. However, it may only sometime to be possible to satisfy the maximum drift limit prescribed by building codes only with CLT shear walls and hybrid steel‐timber joints. Some promising improvements have been proposed in the literature for improving buckling stability and avoiding excess building drifts. Among these, is a new type of shear wall called the Wood‐Steel Composite Shear Wall, which has much higher stiffness and can drastically reduce the overall building drifts due to the employment of Steel Plate Shear Walls. Regarding the above considerations, this paper assesses the structural behaviour of Wood‐Steel Composite Shear Wall systems via the finite element method. In the developed Wood‐Steel Composite Shear Wal system, glue connects a thin gauge steel web plate to the boundary Laminated Strand Lumber frame. Based on previous experimental studies, finite element modelling was performed to investigate the effects of behavioural parameters on the response of the Wood‐Steel Composite Shear Wall system. It was found that the plate wall thickness has a significant effect on the initial stiffness and the peak capacity of this system, while changing that parameter may not change the failure mode of the system.