Abstract: With the increase of the higher steel residential buildings, the traditional cold-formed steel wall is not suitable for the high-rise and mid-rise buildings. For this reason, a novel cold-formed steel wall was developed. In order to newly study the superiority of the steel skin composite wall to the traditional cold-formed thin-walled steel structure composite wall in lateral resistance, the new cold-formed thin-wall steel structure composite steel skin shear wall of gypsum board + steel sheathing. The research on seismic performance was carried out. The two monolithic composite wall specimens were horizontally monotonously loaded without vertical force, and the characteristic parameters such as the failure characteristics, bearing capacity, displacement, shear strength and lateral rigidity of the specimen were obtained. Using ABAQUS to conduct numerical simulation research on the composite wall under horizontal monotonic loading, and numerical results were compared to the test results.
The results show that increasing the thickness of studs can significantly enhance the bearing capacity, stiffness and ductility of the shear wall. The failure types of the wall are brittle failure and ductile failure. Brittle failure is caused by buckling of wall side columns under compression. Ductile failure occurs at the joint of wall panel and tapping screws, and the failure process consumes more energy. The ratio of the stud thickness to the total thickness of the sheathing plays a controlling role in the failure mode of the composite walls. In the design, the stud thickness should be guaranteed, and the thickness of the steel sheathing should be rationally designed to make the wall ductile. In addition, the finite element numerical simulation results are in good agreement with the test results which shows the method used in this paper can effectively predict the mechanical performance of the composite wall.