EUROSTEEL 2017, September 13–15, 2017, Copenhagen, Denmark

Double-steel plate composite shear walls

In-plane seismic behaviour
Michaela Elmatzogloua, Aris Avdelas*,a
a
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of Civil Engineering, Institute of Steel Structures, Greece
emichael@civil.auth.gr, avdelas@civil.auth.gr

ABSTRACT
Double-steel plate concrete (SC) composite shear walls are a structural system intensively used in
nuclear facilities due to its exceptional performance. It consists of a concrete core with exterior steel
faceplates serving as reinforcement. These steel faceplates are anchored to the concrete infill using
headed steel studs which guarantee the composite action between the two different materials. The
focus of this research is the investigation of the seismic performance of rectangular SC composite
shear walls for application to buildings. A simple and cost-efficient form of the SC wall is proposed
based on the research conducted by Vazouras and Avdelas [1]. Its efficiency has been proved
through extensive numerical analysis using a simplified finite element model developed in ANSYS
[2] to simulate the nonlinear cyclic response of SC walls. The accuracy of the developed numerical
model was validated using experimental data reported in the literature [3, 4]. The numerical
predictions included global force-displacement responses, strain and stress distributions on each
material and damage to the steel plates and concrete. A typical damage pattern of the SC walls
included yielding, local buckling and tearing of the steel plates in conjunction with cracking and
crushing of the infill concrete. The impact of various parameters on the in-plane response of SC
walls has been investigated including wall aspect ratio, reinforcement ratio, slenderness ratio, wall
thickness, yield strength of the steel plates and uniaxial compressive strength of concrete.

Keywords: Steel-plate composite shear wall, Shear connectors, Infill concrete, Steel faceplate

1 INTRODUCTION
Shear walls are undoubtedly one of the most critical elements in a high-rise structural system. Steel
plate and reinforced concrete shear walls are traditionally used as axial and seismic load-resisting
systems in structures such as mid-rise and high-rise buildings. The major drawback of steel plate
shear walls is the buckling of the compression zone of the wall, while the main disadvantages of
reinforced concrete (RC) shear walls are their high weight relative to their strength compared to
steel and the development of tension cracks in the tension zones and compressive crushing in the
localized compression areas during high cyclic loading [5]. Furthermore, RC shear walls usually
develop relatively large lateral stiffness, perhaps larger than the one needed to control excessive
displacements. As a result, large shear forces will be attracted to the structure during seismic events,
which in turn have to be resisted by the shear wall and foundation, resulting in great financial costs.
Recently, composite construction has been implemented in shear walls. Double steel plate-concrete
(SC) composite shear walls are one of the most innovative structural systems and they have already
been employed in actual practice in recent years. They mainly consist of two external steel
faceplates and a concrete core. The concrete infill is poured between the steel faceplates and the
steel faceplates are attached to the concrete core using shear connectors. Composite action is most
commonly achieved by welding steel headed studs to the faceplates. The shear studs and concrete
core enhance the stability of the steel plates by preventing their local buckling, while the steel plates
serve as primary flexural reinforcement for the concrete infill and as permanent formwork for
concrete casting during construction.
Ozaki et al. [3] conducted analytical and experimental studies on nine steel-plate reinforced
concrete panels subjected to cyclic in-plane shear loading to investigate the effects of steel faceplate
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thickness, axial compressive loading and partitioning webs on the shear response of SC panels.
Epackachi et al. [4] investigated the behaviour of four rectangular SC walls subjected to cyclic
lateral loading. The specimens were composed of two steel faceplates, infill concrete, headed steel
studs anchoring the faceplates to the concrete core and transverse tie bars to achieve full composite
action. Overall, it can be noticed that the majority of these studies have focused on either the pure
in-plane shear behaviour of SC wall panels or the lateral load capacity of SC walls with flanges.
Flexure and flexure-shear responses have not been studied as thoroughly. Furthermore, most of
these tests were conducted at small scales. Finally, it should be noticed that the most comprehensive
research on SC walls has been conducted by Varma et al. [6, 7] focusing on the essentially elastic
range of response, because the focus of nuclear power plant design is on the elastic response under
design basis earthquake. As a result, the developed guidelines should be restated in terms of
building construction.
Epackachi et al. [4] used LS-DYNA [8] to develop a numerical model and simulate the nonlinear
cyclic response of SC composite shear walls. They used 2-node beam elements to model each shear
connector and coupled one of the nodes to concrete elements. The assumption of perfect bond
between the faceplates and infill concrete resulted in a conservative prediction of the post-peak
resistance of the SC walls. However, it may also affect the pre-peak response for different faceplate
slenderness ratios, defined as the spacing of the connectors to the thickness of the faceplates.
Vazouras and Avdelas [1] studied the behaviour of SC walls under monotonic and cyclic horizontal
loading using the ANSYS Mechanical finite element package [2]. The objective of the research was
to evaluate the influence of fundamental parameters of its response, such as aspect ratio, thickness
of steel plates and study the behavioural curve, the capacity under both compressive and bending
conditions, the ductility and the failure process. Shear connectors have not been modelled.
Therefore, the numerical model assumed a perfect bond between the faceplates and infill concrete
using tie constraints. Since the focus of the investigation was not the behaviour of shear connectors,
the model provided reasonable results for SC walls designed using dense spacing of shear
connectors. In conclusion, the majority of the aforementioned numerical studies focused on the
behaviour of SC walls before achieving the peak load. Furthermore, the majority of them assumed
the steel nodes tied to the concrete nodes and did not address the effects of steel faceplate buckling
and spacing of connectors on the in-plane response.
The focus of this research is the investigation of the seismic performance of rectangular SC
composite shear walls for application to buildings. For this reason, a simple and cost-efficient form
of the SC wall is proposed based on the research conducted by Vazouras and Avdelas [1]. Steel
sideplates properly welded to the steel faceplates are included to prevent pull-out failure of headed
studs, to provide structural integrity and to place concrete in a triaxial stress state. Its efficiency will
be proved through extensive numerical analysis using the simplified three-dimensional finite
element model developed by Elmatzoglou and Avdelas [9], which was further enhanced to provide
accurate results in terms of cyclic loading. Afterwards, this numerical model has been used for a
parametric study in order to investigate the effects of critical parameters on the cyclic and
monotonic in-plane response of SC walls: aspect ratio, reinforcement ratio, slenderness ratio, wall
thickness, yield strength of the faceplates and uniaxial compressive strength of concrete.

2 NUMERICAL ANALYSIS
The numerical study was undertaken using the ANSYS 15 finite element analysis program [2]. The
finite element model accounted for the nonlinear behaviour of materials, the nonlinear interfacial
shear force-slip behaviour of shear studs, the local buckling of the steel plates associated with
geometrical nonlinearity.
As refers to confined concrete (specimens with sideplates), an eight-node 3D solid element
(SOLID65) was used to properly model concrete behaviour. The William-Warnke criterion [10] has
been used as failure criterion and the failure surface of the concrete has been defined by five
strength input parameters. However, the specimens used in the validation study did not have
sideplates resulting in a partially confined concrete infill. As a result, the convergence was rather
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difficult especially for the post-peak stage of response. In such cases, the stress evaluation method
developed by Elmatzoglou and Avdelas [7] has been adopted. In these cases, the stress-strain curve
of concrete has been exclusively defined by an equivalent uniaxial stress-strain curve developed
according to Eurocode 2 (EC2) [11] and presented in Fig. 1(a), where fc is the ultimate compressive
cylinder strength of concrete. A four node structural shell element (SHELL181) was used to
represent the steel plates. The constitutive material law selected to represent monotonic steel
behaviour used the von Mises yield criterion with kinematic hardening rule. The stress-strain
relationship is shown in Fig. 1(b), where fy is the yield stress, fu is the ultimate tensile strength, εy is
the strain at the yield stress fy, εh is the strain at the beginning of strain hardening branch, εu is the
strain at the ultimate strength εy. Under load reversals, the load-bearing capacity of a steel member
generally decreases as the number of load cycles increases [12]. A large literature for the steel
constitutive models [13–15] has been studied to end up with the adopted cyclic response of steel
shown in Fig. 1(c).
Nonlinear springs (COMBIN39) were used to represent the shear connectors. A multilinear load-
slip curve has been used for the first spring, which was placed parallel to the relative motion of steel
plates and infill concrete. Then, a second spring was added to represent the tensile strength of each
headed stud. Turning to boundary contact conditions, contact and noncontact regions were not a
priori known. This kind of contact problem is called a unilateral contact problem with friction [16,
17]. It is a highly nonlinear problem and has to be modelled accordingly in order to simulate the
actual behaviour of a composite SC wall. Three-dimensional nonlinear surface to surface contact
pair elements (CONTA173&TARGE170) have been used to model the nonlinear behaviour of the
interfacial surface between infill concrete and steel plates in order to achieve composite action.
Experimental results reported by Epackachi et al. [4] indicated that the initial stiffness of SC walls
constructed with a baseplate connected to a RC foundation may be substantially affected by the
flexibility of the connection with a potentially significant impact on the dynamic response of the
supported structure. In order to address this issue two different numerical models, namely a detailed
and a simplified one respectively, as shown in Fig. 2, have been developed to identify the
importance of modelling the foundation on the seismic performance of the SC walls.

a) b) c)
Fig. 1. a) The concrete stress-strain model; b) The steel stress-strain model; c) Cyclic behaviour of steel

a) b)

Fig. 2. a) Detailed numerical model; b) Simplified numerical model

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3 VALIDATION
The accuracy of the developed finite element models was verified using the experimental results
reported by Epackachi et al. [4] and Ozaki et al. [3]. The validation procedure has been conducted
for all the specimens, but since the general trend is the same, for brevity, only the load-displacement
curves obtained from the FEM analysis of two specimens are plotted, with respect to the test results
in Fig. 3. As shown, the detailed models accounted for the foundation flexibility and successfully
predicted the experimentally measured stiffness of the test specimens. On the other hand, the
simplified models overestimated the stiffness but predicted the shear capacity and failure
mechanism of the specimens with acceptable accuracy. However, the simulation of a foundation is
not always feasible since it depends on the overall design of the SC wall and the soil properties. For
this reason, the simplified models with a fixed base could be used to preliminary estimate their
lateral load capacity using finite element analysis and as soon as detailing information is provided,
the detailed models can be used for the calculation of the SC wall stiffness. Finally, it was
concluded that since the numerical results showed good agreement with experimental data [3, 4],
the modelling approach reasonably predicts the seismic performance of SC composite walls.

a) b)

c) d)
Fig. 3. a) In-plane shear force – Lateral displacement Curve of SC1; b) In-plane shear force – Lateral displacement
Curve of SC4; c) In-plane shear force – Shear strain Curve of S2-00-NN; d) In-plane shear force – Shear strain
Curve of S3-00-NN

4 PARAMETRIC STUDY
The objective of the parametric analysis was to investigate the influence of important parameters
such as wall thickness t, aspect ratio H/L, reinforcement ratio ρ, slenderness ratio s/tp, yield strength
of the faceplates fy and uniaxial compressive strength of concrete fc and provide guidance for the
seismic behaviour of composite SC walls with sideplates. The objective of the overall design
approach was to prevent brittle failure modes such as local buckling of the steel plates before
yielding and out-of-plane shear failure or interfacial shear failure with the use of appropriate section
detailing of the SC walls.
4.1 Design procedure
The typical cross-section of the analysed specimens is shown in Fig. 4. Each entry was identified
using aspect ratio (LA for low aspect ratio: 0.75; IA for intermediate aspect ratio: 1.25; HA for high
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aspect ratio: 2.0), wall thickness (LT for low wall thickness: 200 mm; IT for intermediate wall
thickness: 300 mm; HT for high wall thickness: 400 mm), concrete compressive strength (NC for
normal strength concrete: 30 MPa; HC for high strength concrete: 40 MPa), steel yield strength (NS
for normal strength steel: 235 MPa; HS for high strength steel: 355 MPa), slenderness ratio and
reinforcement ratio. The specimens were designed considering AISC specification and its Appendix
9 [18, 19] in combination with EC2 [11], since the AISC specification is mainly applicable to shear
walls in nuclear facilities. It should be noted that composite action between steel and concrete is
achieved by shear connectors. Interfacial shear is accompanied by relative slip due to the
deformability of shear studs. This is referred as partial composite action and it has been included in
this research. Loading was simulated by applying the displacement control scheme rather than
direct loading to generate the cyclic behaviour of the composite SC shear wall. A displacement-
controlled, reversed cyclic loading protocol was used according to the recommendations of ACI
374.1-05 [20]. This loading protocol is based on imposing displacements proportional to the yield
displacement of each specimen. For this reason a monotonic analysis was conducted first up to
failure of each specimen, and then the specimens were subjected to a cyclic alternating lateral force.

Fig. 4. Cross-section of the proposed configuration

4.2 Analysis results

4.2.1 Comparison between cyclic and monotonic analysis results
Since the general trend is the same, the comparison of cyclic and monotonic analysis results is
presented in Fig. 5 for different wall aspect ratios. In order to compare the post-peak stage of
response, monotonic analysis curves have been further extended beyond the failure load so as to
reach the displacement corresponding to the last cycle of cyclic analysis. Considering cyclic
analysis results, reduction of stiffness was observed first at displacements greater than those
associated with yielding of the steel plates. Pinched hysteresis and loss of strength and stiffness was
prevalent for low aspect ratio walls and evident in intermediate aspect ratio walls after the ultimate
load. High aspect ratio walls provided a stable and ductile behaviour. Pinching and strength
degradation were attributed to buckling of faceplates, cracking and crushing of the concrete infill
and extensive local buckling and tearing of the faceplates at the base of the wall.
Through the comparison of cyclic and monotonic analysis results it can be seen that the difference
between the capacities predicted through monotonic and cyclic analysis was negligible. The elastic
range was almost identical and the post-peak behaviour was slightly overestimated by the
monotonic curve. This fact is mainly attributed to the exceptional post-elastic behaviour of steel.
Specifically, its high tensile strength and ductility prevented the abrupt deterioration of the SC wall
capacity due to the brittle behaviour of the concrete material characterized by crushing at the toes of
the wall. In general, it can be concluded that a monotonic curve can provide a good estimation of
the general behaviour of SC walls and can be used to clearly identify the effects of the investigated
parameters.

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a) b)

c)
Fig. 5. Comparison of cyclic and monotonic analysis results of a) specimen LALTNCNS-20-4.6%; b) specimen
IALTNCNS-20-4.6%; c) of specimen HALTNCNS-20-4.6%.

4.2.2 Load transfer mechanism and failure process

Considering the load transfer mechanism, the imposed in-plane shear force on the top of the SC
wall caused an overturning moment and shear force at the base leading to a combination of normal
and shear stresses. As a result, the wall was subjected to a combination of in-plane flexure and in-
plane shear. In general, the observed behaviour and failure mechanism were similar for all
specimens, since they experienced similar damage progression and failed due to in-plane flexure
rather than due to in-plane shear. The specimens behaved in an almost elastic manner up to the
yielding displacement. Afterwards, yielding of steel plates began to develop prior to buckling.
Flexural cracking of the infill concrete occurred initially and was followed by flexural yielding of
the steel faceplates at the tension toe of the wall with rising lateral forces. Cyclic loading caused
both ends of the steel faceplates to undergo yielding because of flexural tension. Local buckling of
the faceplates occurred at the compression toe of the wall with increasing lateral forces. Cyclic
loading caused local buckling to alternate between opposite toes at the base of the wall. As the
lateral forces and deformations increased, concrete infill crushed and spalled at both ends and
crushing gradually extended beyond the toes of the wall. Extensive yielding of the faceplates
occurred with rising cyclic deformations, leading eventually to the expected ductile fracture of the
steel faceplates at their base due to stress concentration. As a result, it can be concluded that the
behaviour of SC walls with sideplates was flexure dominated irrespective of the aspect ratio,
thickness or reinforcement ratio. The corresponding in-plane shear was resisted by diagonal
compression in the concrete infill and horizontal shear stresses in the faceplates, but it did not
govern the failure mechanism.
Additionally, it has been noticed that the post-peak behaviour of the specimens was closely related
to the spacing of connectors especially at the base of the wall, which was the vulnerable area of all
SC walls as shown in Fig. 6. In fact, the analysis results revealed a potential failure plane at the
level of the headed studs at the base of the wall, which would have to be addressed in design
standards through prescriptive detailing. This fact reveals two possible solutions for the delay of the
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post-peak strength deterioration, the achievement of a more stable, ductile response and the
refinement of the seismic behaviour of the system, namely the adoption of a closer spacing of the
connectors and the addition of transverse tie bars at the base of the wall. Closer spacing should only
be adopted between the first row of connectors and the base of the wall since the adoption of
uniform closer spacing may lead to an uneconomical design and convert the composite action
between steel and concrete from partial to full resulting to a severe decrease of ductility.
Overall, the damage process under monotonic loading can be simplified as being composed by three
major stages: the elastic stage, the yielding developing stage and the failure stage. The elastic stage
started from the onset of loading until yielding occurred in the specimens. The specimens deformed
almost in an elastic manner in this stage. The horizontal force increased linearly with an increase in
the lateral displacement. No local buckling was observed. The yielding developing stage began
from the yielding to the peak load of the specimens. The walls first suffered from slight buckling at
the base of the right boundary corner. The local buckling became more obvious and extended upon
further loading. The failure stage started from the peak load to the failure point of the specimens. As
lateral displacement further rose, the existing local buckling greatly developed and aggravated. It
was located mostly from the base of the wall up to the first row of studs. Concrete crushing was
observed upon further loading. Fracture due to severe buckling initiated at the right corner and
propagated across the depth of the wall. Finally, the specimens lost their capacity to maintain the
lateral load and suffered a complete failure identified in the numerical analysis as loss of
convergence.

Fig. 6. Monotonic analysis results - Damage and distribution of Von-Mises stress in the steel plates at failure of
specimens LALTNCNS-20-4.6%, IALTNCNS-20-4.6% and HALTNCNS-20-4.6%.

4.2.3 Effect of aspect ratio

As the thickness of the wall increased, the aspect ratio had a more pronounced effect on the yield
and peak shear loads as well as on the initial and post-yield lateral stiffness. Overall, as the aspect
ratio increased, the lateral load capacity and stiffness of SC walls declined. Additionally, as the
aspect ratio increased, the displacement corresponding to the peak shear force and the ductility
augmented. Furthermore, buckling of the steel plates in high aspect ratio walls was not detrimental
in performance and had a minimal effect on the ultimate shear strength and overall performance of
the specimens.

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4.2.4 Effect of reinforcement ratio

Although the reinforcement ratio had a negligible effect on the initial stiffness and ductility, it
significantly affected the lateral strength as it was expected [3], namely lower reinforcement ratios
led to less lateral capacity. Furthermore, the effect of the reinforcement ratio on the yield and
maximum shear strength decreased as the wall thickness increased or as the aspect ratio decreased.
Indeed an increase in the aspect ratio substantially reduced the effect of other design variables on
the response of SC walls. As a result, it can be concluded that the limits imposed by the AISC
specification and its Appendix 9 [18, 19] are not applicable for the proposed configuration and may
be extended in order to achieve higher capacity with only a limited decrease on ductility.
4.2.5 Effect of slenderness ratio
The slenderness ratio of the faceplates had no effect on their yielding load and a small impact on the
lateral load capacity for the range of slenderness ratio studied (20 to 40), which was expected since
its role is generally critical for compression loading. Specifically, as the slenderness ratio of low
aspect ratio walls increased, the peak lateral strength declined whereas the initial stiffness of the
specimens decreased due to additional slip between the steel plates and the concrete infill and as a
result the ductility of the specimens augmented. In specimens with intermediate aspect ratio, the
rise of the slenderness ratio resulted in a small rise of ductility, less significant pinching and similar
lateral capacity. On the other hand, increasing the slenderness ratio in high aspect ratio walls
enhanced the capacity and reduced the displacement ductility. Additionally, it was evident that high
aspect ratio walls with small slenderness ratios had enhanced composite action between steel and
concrete. It should be noted that the inclusion of sideplates allowed for the adoption of larger
spacing between the shear studs than the limit proposed by the design codes [18, 19], without
causing a brittle failure mode. The above spacing had a slight effect on the in-plane lateral
displacement of the composite SC walls, but it was very effective in controlling out-of-plane
deformation and concrete crushing. In fact, increasing the number of shear studs through reducing
their spacing resulted in the redistribution of stresses imposed on the concrete surface and in the
redistribution of stresses of the studs. As a consequence, the corresponding axial displacement of
the studs has been reduced. However, if sideplates are removed from the proposed configuration so
as to adjust the proposed configuration to the structural system, the slenderness ratio can be a
critical parameter for the overall behaviour of the system and the slenderness of the wall should be
designed according to the specified limits [18, 19].
Furthermore, the numerical results of this research have been compared with analysis results
reported by Vazouras and Avdelas [1] in order to identify the importance of modelling the
slenderness of the wall with the use of shear connectors and the unilateral contact between the steel
plates and concrete with the use of contact elements on the seismic performance of SC walls. In
general, the assumption of perfect bond between the steel plates and the infill concrete did not
significantly affect the pre-peak strength response of the SC walls in the range of steel plate
slenderness studied in this research. However, the post-peak resistance was underpredicted when
perfect bond was assumed. This fact is mainly attributed to premature fracture of the faceplates
caused by the assumption of perfect bond.
4.2.6 Effect of concrete compressive strength
Although the initial stiffness and the displacement at peak load were not substantially affected, the
effect on the lateral strength was rather important. Specifically, the yield and ultimate strength
augmented as the concrete strength increased. In fact, the aspect ratio played a critical role since the
influence of the concrete compressive strength on the peak lateral load increased as the aspect ratio
decreased.
4.2.7 Effect of steel yield strength
In general, the shear load capacity soared with the increase of steel yield strength. Additionally, the
pre and post-yield stiffness as well as the ductility have been decreased. It has been noticed that the
increase of steel yield strength had a more pronounced impact on specimens with aspect ratios
lower than 2.0 and it notably increased as the wall thickness declined.
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4.2.8 Effect of wall thickness

Considering analysis results, it is evident that walls with larger thickness achieved higher peak
loads, but their ductility was significantly diminished, leading to a non-ductile failure mode. For
example, increasing the wall thickness by 100 mm improved the lateral load capacity by 6%, but
reduced the available ductility. Since the general trend was the same for all specimens, it can be
concluded that increasing wall thickness may be the conventional way of improving the load
capacity of a wall and reducing the axial load ratio, but a significant increase of wall thickness will
significantly increase the structural weight, cause more seismic base shear under cyclic loading,
steadily increase pinching behaviour and finally decrease the available ductility. In addition,
difficulties during construction will also be introduced due to the large volume of the infill concrete
and the usable floor area will be reduced. Therefore, increasing the wall thickness is not
recommended for the enhancement of shear capacity, especially in regions with high seismic
hazard, since it is neither effective nor economical.

5 CONCLUSIONS
The main focus of this study was to investigate the seismic behaviour of low, intermediate and high
aspect ratio composite SC walls. The SC walls studied here were composed of steel faceplates,
headed studs anchoring the faceplates to the infill concrete so as to guarantee composite action of
the two materials and steel sideplates connecting the faceplates so as to provide structural integrity.
For this purpose, implicit numerical analysis using the ANSYS Mechanical finite element package
[2] has been used. In order to address the importance of modelling foundation flexibility, two
different three-dimensional finite element models have been created namely a detailed and a
simplified one. These numerical models have been benchmarked using experimental data reported
in the literature [3, 4]. It has been concluded that although the simplified models overestimated the
stiffness, they can be used to predict the lateral load capacity and failure process of SC walls with
reasonable accuracy.
Secondly, this numerical model was utilized as a tool to comprehensively analyse the monotonic
and cyclic behaviour of composite SC walls with sideplates by varying critical parameters such as
aspect ratio, reinforcement ratio, slenderness ratio, wall thickness, concrete compressive strength
and steel yield strength. Initially, specimens have been subjected to monotonic and then to cyclic
loading. At first, cyclic and monotonic analysis results have been compared and it has been proved
that monotonic curves provided a rather satisfactory estimation of the lateral load capacity and
ductility of SC walls. Specifically, the elastic range was almost identical and the post-peak
behaviour was slightly overestimated by the monotonic curve. Afterwards, the load transfer
mechanism and failure process have been described in terms of monotonic and cyclic analysis
results. In general, the behaviour of SC walls with sideplates was flexure dominated irrespective of
the aspect ratio, thickness or reinforcement ratio. The damage process under monotonic loading has
been simplified as being composed by three major stages: the elastic stage, the yielding developing
stage and the failure stage. Furthermore, the critical parameters have been identified in terms of in-
plane shear loading. Specifically, the shear strength and lateral stiffness of the proposed SC wall
configuration were governed by the aspect ratio and the reinforcement ratio. Of all the variables
considered, the slenderness ratio had the smallest effect on strength and stiffness, since sideplates
maintained the structural integrity of the system even for high slenderness ratios.
In conclusion, it is indisputable that this form of composite walling system consisting of steel plates
and a concrete infill has the potential to be used as lateral and horizontal load resisting elements in
steel framed, composite and reinforced concrete buildings.

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