Seismic behavior of an innovative assembled composite structural wall

In order to solve the problems of corrosion and premature buckling of the exterior steel plate of the double-steel composite structural wall (DSCW), this paper proposed an innovative assembled composite structural wall (ACW). The concrete layers are innovatively utilized in ACW as protection layers to prevent steel plates from corrosion and early buckling. Six ACW specimens and a reinforced concrete (RC) structural wall were tested under cyclic load, and the seismic performance was evaluated. The results showed that: i) the displacement capacity decreased and the strength degraded rapidly as the stud spacing increased; ii) an increase in reinforcement ratio mitigated the concrete crushing at the wall toe and the steel plates buckling; and iii) two exterior concrete layers effectively delayed the yielding of steel plates, improving the ductility and flexural strength of ACWs, but one exterior concrete layer caused the out-of-plane torsion failure. In addition, ACW was better in terms of ductility, load capacity, and energy dissipation capacity compared to traditional RC structural walls. Finally, three different codes were evaluated, and the calculated results of AISC 360–22 were conservative compared with the experimental results.