Research Projects

Low-cost lightweight housing is a new concept that adopts the latest technologies for faster construction, superior quality, and reduced material and labor costs. Precast construction has long been used with Reinforced Cement Concrete (RCC), but traditional reinforced concrete shear wall panels require dense reinforcement and large web infill for seismic loads, leading to poor concreting and performance under earthquakes. steel-concrete composite shear walls have been found as an alternative due to their good energy absorbing capacity, large shear stiffness with smaller thickness, and adequate lateral capacity under cyclic load. For the past two decades, attention has shifted to studying profiled cold-formed steel-concrete composite wall behavior due to their advantages, such as lightweightness and bonding between steel and concrete. The profiled sheet acts as a lateral load resisting system to the steel frame and can also act as permanent formwork for infill concrete. During the service period, profiled sheet and infill concrete act together to resist lateral loads and have higher shear capacity with less reinforcement. Lightweight concrete (LWC) is a useful alternative for normal weight concrete because of its lower density, which reduces earthquake load and foundation size. However, there is limited research on LWC's structural applications, such as wall panels, due to its low compressive strength. The study of these shortcomings is necessary to predict the lateral load capacity of profiled sheet composite walls and develop analysis and design guidelines for low-cost and lightweight steel-concrete composite housing systems.