Design and selection of building materials and their components are an efficient way to reduce energy consumption. Thus, enveloping buildings with thermal insulation materials is one of the most effective ways to reduce energy consumption [1] [2] . Several studies have been carried out on this subject, and it is thought that the building type, shape, construction materials, insulation materials, and costs affect the thickness of an insulator [3] - [7] .

In general, external insulation methods are preferred around the world. However, the use of insulation blocks composed of Expanded Polystyrene Foam (EPS), which is an alternative to building external insulation, has become more widespread with the intention of thermal insulation. EPS used for heat and sound insulation or packaging is composed of small, white and interconnected beads and exhibits superior engineering properties due to its structure such as lightweight, versatile, energy efficient, and cost effective. Therefore, it is used as insulation material in buildings and can be molded into many shapes for different purposes [8] [9] .

Most previous researches focus on light weight concrete masonry units as good thermal insulation materials in buildings because they have a lower thermal conductivity than normal weight concrete. Unfortunately, masonry units made from light weight concrete have low mechanical properties compared with normal weight concrete [10] - [14] . By inserting insulation material such as EPS into normal weight concrete with a special configuration of concrete masonry units (CMUs) leads to increase in their thermal resistance without an effect of their mechanical performance [15] .

Firstly, the FE using Abaqus software was verified with experimental results which published by Abu-Bakre et al. (2016, 2017) [16] [17] and the details of the tested specimens are shown in Table 1 . The comparison of FE model results with the experimental results was aimed to ensure that the material and elements properties, and convergence criteria are suitable to model the behavior of the wall and that the simulation process is correct. Therefore, the walls which tested experimentally were simulated for verification study.

As shown in Table 2 , there was good relationship between the FE and experimental load-deflection curves. This confirmed the validity of the settled FE models and reliability of the FE analysis.

The finite element method (FEM) is one of the powerful tools for modeling a structure with a very complicated geometry and materials. There are many strategies as shown in Figure 1 to model masonry structure with FEM, which includes macro and micro modeling. The macro model is based on the assumption of homogenous materials, and the mortar joints and units can be smeared into one isotropic or anisotropic material. This procedure may be preferred for the analysis of large masonry structures due to the reduced time and memory requirements as well as a user-friendly mesh generation. In addition, this type of modeling is most valuable when a compromise between accuracy and efficiency is needed [18] [19] .

Finite element analysis was performed using Abaqus software to validate the experimental results of SCMSW specimens.

Figure 4 shows the Von Mises stresses distribution in SW3 specimen at maximum load. While Table 2 shows the maximum load values measured by experiment and predicted by finite element software Abaqus. A good agreement is shown between the numerical and experimental results.

Table 2. Comparison of predicted load by F.E and experimental capacities.

The 18-storey residential building as shown in Figure 5 is composed of self-insulated concrete masonry shear walls was analyzed by using ETABS (v9.5.0) software. The building is designed for the seismic intensity of 8 according to Chinese standard.

The structural model was generated using ETABS software to give a practical application for the self-insulating concrete masonry shear walls in general engineering practice. Self-weight of structural elements, finishing load of 3 kN/m² and live load of 2 kN/m², act at each floor and at roof level were applied to the structural model. The maximum horizontal displacements for X and Y direction under earthquake excitations were found 15 and 30 mm, respectively. Moreover, the first mode shape time period is 0.97 second, while the second and third mode shapes time period are 0.14 and 0.07 second, respectively. According to this example the new type of self-insulating concrete masonry shear walls can be used in areas have seismic intensity of 8 or less and it is application valid until 18-storey height building. The FE model and shape of the studied Building are shown in Figure 6 .

This paper evaluated the effects that the height-to-length aspect ratio, axial compressive stress, and reinforcement ratio have on the behavior of self-insulating concrete masonry shear walls under in-plane cyclic loading. SCMSW specimens’ performance was evaluated based on a comparison of predicted vs. actual load capacity, drift capacity, displacement ductility, height of plasticity, equivalent plastic hinge length, amount of energy dissipated, and value of equivalent hysteretic damping. Moreover, finite element results obtained from the Abaqus program were compared to those obtained experimentally. Finally, a design example of the 18-storey building under an earthquake excitation was provided to give a practical application of the self-insulating concrete masonry shear walls.