Experimental and numerical investigations on seismic behavior of steel truss reinforced concrete core walls

This paper aims to investigate the seismic behavior of steel truss reinforced concrete (STRC) core walls under cyclic lateral loading. The quasi-static tests on two 1/5-scaled specimens including one steel reinforced concrete (SRC) core wall and one STRC core wall with embedded steel trusses designed according to engineering practice were conducted. The structural behavior of two specimens were compared, including the damage mode, force-displacement relationship, deformation capacity, strength and stiffness degradation, energy dissipation, and strain responses. The test results show that the embedded steel trusses affects significantly the seismic performance of the STRC core walls in terms of lateral load carrying capacity, energy dissipation and damage mode. In addition, finite element (FE) models of SRC and SPRC core walls were developed and validated. The FE models are able to predict the nonlinear responses of core walls with a reasonable level of accuracy. In consideration of the fact that in engineering practice the axial compressive load ratio of STRC core walls would be much higher than that of the specimens in the tests, the verified numerical model was further used in the study on the seismic behavior of STRC core walls with high axial compressive load ratio. The results obtained in this study could provide useful information for the engineering application of STRC core walls.