Structural Performance of Internally Stiffened Double-Skinned Profiled Composite Walls with Openings

The double-skin profiled composite wall (DSPCW) system, filled with concrete material, is favorable in modern structures due to its high strength and ductility. Openings may be required within this composite wall (DSPCW) for various reasons, similar to a conventional bearing wall, which can lead to a reduction in bearing capacity. Therefore, to avoid changes in the geometry, materials, and thickness of this DSPCW wall, a new internally stiffening concept has been suggested by providing embedded cold-formed steel tube (CFST) columns. For this purpose, two full-scale DSPCW specimens were tested under static axial load, one of which was fabricated with a large opening size and stiffened with two octagonal CFST columns, while the other was designed without an opening and served as a control wall specimen. The results showed that the stiffened DSPCW with an opening achieved a slightly lower ultimate bearing strength (-9.4%) than the control wall specimen, with no reduction in the ductility behavior. Furthermore, several finite element models of DSPCW have been analyzed and designed to investigate additional parameters that were not experimentally tested, including the effects of the embedded CFST column's shape and different types of internal stiffeners longitudinally provided inside these columns. The numerical investigation confirmed that the embedded CFST column with an octagonal cross-section was more efficient compared to the hexagonal and rectangular shapes by about 11% and 18.4%, respectively. Furthermore, using internal steel stiffeners for embedded tubes with a T-shape improved the axial bearing capacity of the DSPCW with an opening slightly higher than the corresponding stiffened walls with other investigated stiffener shapes (V-shaped, U-shaped, and L-shaped).