Combined axial and flexural strength of profiled composite walls

Profiled composite walls are composed of cold-formed profiled steel sheetin g which serves as permanent formwork for a reinforced concrete wall. This f orm of wall construction can provide many benefits when being used in place of infill panels in steel-framed low-rise and multistorey buildings. In ad dition to this, these walls can be used in the retrofitting and rehabilitat ion of existing reinforced concrete or steel structures to increase the lat eral stiffness and strength of a building. Strength is of major importance to the successful application of such members and this paper considers an e xtensive experimental programme undertaken on walls subjected to combined b ending and compression. The tests revealed that due to the thin-walled natu re of the sheeting, local buckling was significant. These experiments and i ndependent tests were then used successfully to calibrate a numerical model which incorporated the effects of local buckling. Furthermore, a parametri c study was undertaken to consider the effects of various international pro files and the effects of local buckling were again found to be the most sig nificant parameter.