# Experimental Study of High-Strength Concrete-Steel Plate Composite Shear Walls
## 1 Introduction  
Shear walls serve as an effective structural element for resisting lateral load in tall buildings during seismic events. Conventional reinforced concrete shear walls (RCSW) are considered to be a cost-effective way for preventing structure collapse and ensure life-safety, which has been widely used in the design of low- and medium-rise building structures in seismic regions [1]. With the increase of building height, vertical axial load demands at lower floors exponentially grow, resulting in much thicker RCSW with the consideration of code-specified axial compression ratio limits [2; 3; 4]. Under such circumstance, excessively thick walls reduce the usable floor areas and increase the gravity load intensity, causing more seismic forces and severer structural damage. A review of past research work indicated that RCSW were mainly tested under low axial compressive loadings [1; 5; 6; 7]. The first explanation is that reinforced concrete buildings are usually designed with a low axial compression ratio in high seismicity zones due to code limits. The second possibility is that conventional RCSW undergo significant structural damage in the form of undesirable failure patterns and deteriorated strength and ductility performances when subjected to high axial loadings [8]. [PERSON] [9] observed an abrupt out-of-plane compressive failure mode on experimentally tested RCSW under high axial compression ratios, and concluded that significant strength degradation and ductility deterioration would occur with the increase of the axial compression ratio. [PERSON] [10] conducted a comprehensive research study to set up a library of critical parameters that affect the behavior of shear walls based ona large amount of existing experimental tests, from which a predictive meta-model was developed to forecast the responses of desired shear walls. Researchers explored the composite steel-concrete wall system by adding structural steel in the wall section, which potentially takes advantages of two materials' mechanical properties in order to improve the seismic performance of concrete shear walls under high axial loading and decrease the wall thickness. [PERSON] [11] tested composite shear walls with I-shape or box-shape steel profiles that were placed at the extremities, and found that the lateral resistance and displacement ductility can be effectively improved by encased steel profiles. [PERSON] and [PERSON] [12; 13] studied RCSW partially restrained by the steel frame at boundaries. It is concluded from the experimental results that this composite structural system provided adequate strength and stiffness to resist lateral forces and it would be applicable for low- and medium-rise buildings. Some researchers investigated the mixed use of RCSW and circular or rectangular concrete-filled steel tubular (CFST) columns [14; 15; 16]. The existing experimental results indicated that the strength and ductility performances were effectively improved by using CFST columns as the boundary elements. Previous research studies show that the structural steel is usually arranged at the extremities of reinforced concrete wall sections to form composite boundary elements; [PERSON] [17], [PERSON] [18], and [PERSON] [19] conducted similar research work. For such a structural system, RCSW mainly serve as a shear-resisting component, while the function of composite boundary elements is to resist the overturning moment. Apart from the use of composite boundary elements, researchers began to make use of the structural steel plate in the wall panel to further improve the lateral load performance in recent years. The concrete-steel plate composite shear wall system can be classified into two types: concrete-filled steel plate (CFSP) shear wall and steel-plate-embedded concrete shear wall. [PERSON] and [PERSON] [20; 21] experimentally studied the CFSP composite shear walls and concluded that this wall system has larger lateral strength and deformation capacity under high axial compressive loadings.