Experimental and numerical study on the shear strength of new bolted connection assembled shear wall

Although the installation of assembled shear wall has been widely used in structure construction, the splicing zone and structural integrity are still issues of great concern. This paper proposes a new form of bolted connection assembled shear wall (BASW) to improve the construction efficiency and structural integrity of assembled shear wall. To investigate the mechanical behavior and shear strength calculation methods of the new bolted connection assembled shear wall under horizontal load, firstly, four shear wall specimens, including one cast-in-place (CIP) shear wall and three new BASWs, were designed and assembled. After the cyclic loads were applied to the four specimens, failure modes and hysteretic behavior were investigated. Secondly, a numerical model was established and validated by experimental results, and then it was used to analyze the effects of the axial compression ratio, shear-to-span ratio, and hoop ratio on the mechanical behavior and strength. Finally, on the basis of stress mechanism, we derived the calculation methods for the cracking strength, yield strength, and shear strength, respectively. The results show that the mechanical behavior of the BASW is close to that of the CIP shear wall. The shear strength increases with smaller shear span ratios or larger axial compression ratios, but ductility decreases. The lower hoop ratio presents larger shear strength and stiffness, but the range of increase tends to weaken. The calculated values obtained by the proposed calculation methods show good agreement with the experimental results of BASW strength. These results indicate that the bolted connection assembled shear wall has superior behavior, and the calculation nethod proposed in this paper have sufficient accuracy in predicting the BASW strength.