Cyclic testing of steel frames infilled with concrete sandwich panels

In-plane seismic behaviour of concrete sandwich panel-infilled steel frame (CSP-ISF) was experimentally and numerically investigated. Four large-scale, single bay and single story steel frame specimens were tested under reversed cyclic lateral loading. Three infilled frames with different aspect ratios along with one bare frame were considered. It was found that addition of sandwich panels leads to considerable increase in the lateral stiffness and strength, ductility, energy dissipation capacity as well as equivalent viscous damping ratio of the steel frames. Furthermore, the maximum shear capacity of CSP-ISF specimens was validated by analytical approaches which showed good agreement with experimental results. Based on the present experiments, structural performance levels required for Performance-based Analysis are also proposed for concrete sandwich panel used as infill walls. Finally, a numerical model is presented to analyze the nonlinear behaviour of CSP-ISFs.