Investigating behaviour and failure modes of FRP and hybrid steel/FRP shear walls

Petkune, Natalja (2016) Investigating behaviour and failure modes of FRP and hybrid steel/FRP shear walls. (PhD thesis), Kingston University, .

Abstract

The behaviour of steel shear walls has been investigated for several decades. They have been used in a number of high rise buildings as a primary lateral loading system. Steel shear walls have significant advantages in terms of their light weight, high stiffness and energy absorption in comparison with other structural systems. Hybrid structural elements are becoming popular in thin walled structures, sandwich panels and shear walls. Hybrid shear walls (HSW) are an innovative structural lateral load resisting system. In this thesis HSW are defined as consisting of steel framed elements and steel infill plates laminated with fibre reinforced polymers (FRP) material. By reducing out-of-plane deformations of the infill plate and increasing energy absorption capacity, such systems have the potential to provide highly effective structural solution. The aim of this PhD project was to conduct experimental studies and investigate the behaviour of steel framed shear walls with steel, hybrid (steel/CFRP and steel/GFRP) and pure FRP (glass FRP and carbon FRP) infill plates. Medium scale specimens with dimensions of approximately 1 m width and 1 m height were tested under displacement controlled cyclic sinusoidal loading with amplitudes increasing from 0.2 mm to 35 mm in accordance to the ATC-24 protocol. Analysis of the behaviour of specimens was done predominately via comparing load values and energy absorption. Analysis of the results has shown that hybrid steel and FRP specimens have higher stiffness in comparison to the control steel specimen and a higher energy absorption capacity. Additional analysis performed was that of specific energy absorption to weight, the importance of the surface of connections between primary fish plates elements and infill plates and the strengthening of damaged specimens.

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