Improving the effectiveness of hybrid shear walls

Developing structural elements' performance to resist seismic loading is one of the critical aspects towards the reduction of the impact of earthquake damages. The incorporation of steel infill plate shear walls into building design has been carried out for over four decades. Traditional shear walls resist reasonably well seismic forces, but they are not always sufficiently optimised to become practical, effective and economical solutions. Therefore, hybrid shear walls were designed using Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) materials attached to the thin steel infill plates of shear walls, allowing an increase in structural stiffness, higher ultimate load and a high level of energy dissipation. This paper identifies the relevant factors and provides an overview of different approaches to enhance the performance of hybrid steel shear walls by evaluating the factors influencing the optimisation of the performance and improving the balance of the load-bearing characteristics between infill plates and steel frames. The proposed paper aims to identify the best way to develop a shear wall system further with a thin hybrid infill plate. The work focuses on obtaining experimental results with optimised characteristics of the infill plates and analysing them with a comparison with the achievements of other authors.