Research On Nonlinear Finite Element Analysis Of Steel Plate Embedded Reinforced Concrete Shear Wall With Tie Rods

The innovational composite shear walls which consist of a reinforced concrete walls with a steel plate embedded to the concrete walls was proposed to ensure the high lateral strength and stiffness in the bottom of high-rise building structure. In the composite shear walls the reinforced concrete walls was attached to both sides of the steel plate using mechanical connectors such as shear studs or tie rods. Compared to a reinforced concrete shear walls, the composite shear walls with the same shear capacity, and most likely larger shear stiffness, will have smaller thickness and less weight, as well as the concrete wall restrains the steel plate and prevents its bucking before it yields to make the best of the material properties of steel and concrete. Because the studies about how to arrange the mechanical connectors especially tie rods to improve the the mechanical performance of the composite shear walls is rarely at home and abroad, the paper will focus on the tie rods to present the effects of tie rods design on the mechanical properties and level of composite action of the composite shear walls.(1) This paper predicts the effect of the mechanical connectors including studs and tie rods on the seismic performance of the composite shear walls, based on the analysis of skeleton curves, stiffness degradation curve and ductility coefficients of 9 experimental composite shear walls with studs, tie rods or without mechanical connectors.(2) Nonlinear finite element analyses were conducted using ABAQUS to expand the experimental database The finite element models were benchmarked using the experimental results of 4 composite shear walls specimens. And the finite element models were used to further evaluate the effect of different parameters expected to influence the composite shear walls’ shear capacity including the steel plate thickness, tie rod spacing, tie rod diameter and axial compression ratio on the mechanical properties and shear deformation of the composite shear wall.(3) The tie rod spacing to plate thickness ratios determine the local bucking of the steel plate and the level of composite action between the concrete and the steel embedded. Thus, the function relationship between the limiting bucking stress and the tie rod spacing to the thickness ratios are proposed in the thesis, based on the stability problems of columns and the influence rule of tie rod spacing to plate thickness ratios on the local bucking of the steel plate, which was obtained from the linear perturbation analysis. Besides, a computing method is assumed to predict the level of composite action in the paper. 2 series of finite element models of the steel plate embeded R.C. shear walls with aspects of 1.5 and 2 respectively were used to analyse the effect of the shear connector design on the level of the composite action between the steel plate and concrete in the steel plate embeded R.C.composite shear wall, and provides the design recommendations for structural design.