EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON SEISMIC BEHAVIOR OF LIGHT-GAUGE STEEL WALL FILLED WITH GLAZED HOLLOW BEAD MORTAR

A new type of light-gauge steel wall filled with glazed hollow bead mortar is proposed for multi-story buildings in rural area. To investigate the seismic behavior of the wall, three 1:1.25 scaled specimens were tested using cyclic quasi-static loading scheme. The failure mode of those walls was investigated. The strength, ductility, energy dissipation capacity and stiffness degradation behavior were obtained from the hysteretic curves. The test results indicate that the structure remain elastic when the story drift angle is no more than 1/1000, and the strength does not significantly decrease when the story drift angle reaches 1/100. The failure mode is shown to be a shear failure; however, relatively good ductility and energy dissipation capacity were observed due to the restraint effect of the surrounding steel elements. Simplified equations were proposed to estimate the strength of the walls, and good agreement with an error no more than 10% was achieved between the strength estimated by the equations and those obtained from the tests.