Comparative study of different steel‐concrete composite shear walls

High‐rise buildings are typically subjected to horizontal loads as wind and earthquake, therefore, to provide an adequate lateral stiffness and resistance, structural cores should be considered within the structure.

For this reason, to provide alternative yet advantageous solutions, a comparison between concrete cores and composite cores for high‐rise buildings' performances is presented here. Some recent applications in US and China, indeed, showed how the steel‐concrete composite shear wall solution could give better results in terms of construction time and constructability ensuring a significant financial gain.

Different ideas of composite shear walls will be presented and parameters of stiffness and resistance for each cross section will be evaluated. Thereafter, the best solutions, in terms of the abovementioned parameters and constructability, will be implemented into a real case of a building, modelled on ETABS software and compared with the original solution in reinforced concrete. In addition to highlighting the structural benefits of the proposed solution, it will be shown that the proposed solution has lower carbon footprint compared to other conventional solutions.