Shaking Table Tests of a Novel Flat Slab-Flanged Wall (FSFW) Coupled System with Embedded Concrete-Filled-Steel-Tubes in Wall Piers

The flat slab-flanged wall (FSFW) coupled system has gained popularity in recent years; however, its seismic performance remains an issue, as beams and columns in it are commonly eliminated. To tackle this problem, embedding concrete-filled steel tubes (CFSTs) in wall piers has been proposed to strengthen the system; the viability of this approach has been verified at the member level. Along this line, this study embarks on a shaking table testing of a 1/8-scale five-story FSFW structure equipped with CFSTs in walls, with an aim to understand the overall seismic behavior of such an enhanced system. As with the practice in many countries, the plan layout of the test structure consisted of four rows of wall piers, thus presenting a ‘fish-bone’ floor configuration that relied only upon the walls to resist gravity and lateral loads. The structure was subjected to a suite of input ground motions along with white-noise excitations. By so doing, its damage progression, pattern and dynamic characteristics were clearly identified. Furthermore, a non-linear time history analysis was conducted using PERFORM-3D, and the goodness-of-fit of the computed responses to the experimental records was examined. Findings indicated that the application of CFSTs was instrumental in resisting the simulated earthquake loads acting on the FSFW system, hence the global response limits required by codes of practice were met, even in the case of extremely strong earthquakes. Nevertheless, the junction between the shear walls and floor slabs was found to be the weakest links in the whole system. Designers are thus cautioned to implement proper detailing in those regions to prevent local distress, though it did not appear to acutely impair the system’s collapse-resisting capacity.