Experimental And Theoretical Studies Of Unstiffened Steel Plate Shear Walls

For the past few decades, experimental and analytical studies have been conducted on the use of steel plate shear walls as primary lateral load resisting elements in buildings. These studies have identified unique performance characteristics, including high elastic stiffness properties, large displacement ductility capacities, and stable hysteresis behavior. Steel plate shear walls have therefore been proposed as viable structural alternatives to resist lateral loads in medium- and high-rise steel construction, particularly in areas of high seismic risk. One-bay single story unstiffened steel plate shear walls with different moment-resisting frame, varying panel slenderness ratio and panel aspect ratio have been investigated in this study. The main research woks are summarized as follows: Firstly, the results of an experimental study of two same 1:3 scale one-bay single story unstiffened steel shear walls with a slenderness ratio 386 subjected to cyclic quasi-static loading were present. The test specimens proved to be initially very stiff, showed excellent ductility and energy dissipation. The panel has visible distortion even under service load and the column has large flexural and torsional deformation in the out-wall plane. Secondly, a nonlinear finite element analysis that considered both material and geometric nonlinearities of the test specimen was conducted and it was able to predict the behavior of the specimen accurately. Thirdly, nonlinear finite element analysis of one-bay single story unstiffened steel plate shear walls with different moment-resisting frame, varying panel slenderness ratio and panel aspect were investigated and on the basis above, shear load-carrying capacity formulae of unstiffened steel plate shear walls was present.