Seismic Performance of Steel Plate Shear Walls Considering Various Design Approaches

Keywords: In-span plastic hinge; Experimental; Steel plate shear walls; Seismic performance; Deterioration and failure modes; Deterioration model; Collapse potential; Collapse fragility curve; Seismic Performance Factors; Infill plate design; FEMA P695 Methodology

Abstract: This report presents the results of experimental and analytical studies to investigate the seismic performance of steel plate shear walls (SPSWs) considering different design philosophies of horizontal boundary elements (HBEs) and infill plates. The experimental study on a three-story SPSW specimen showed the development of HBE in-span hinges which resulted in an accumulation of plastic incremental deformations. A finite element investigation on the tested SPSW specimen demonstrated similar behavior. Furthermore, collapse assessment of SPSWs with various structural configurations (e.g., panel aspect ratio, seismic weight intensity, and number of stories) was conducted to investigate impact of sharing of story shear forces between the boundary frames and infill plates on the performance of SPSWs. SPSWs designed with the current seismic performance factors specified in the ASCE 7-10 and neglecting the contribution of their boundary moment resisting frames to resist story shear forces met the FEMA P695 performance criterion, while that was not the case for SPSWs designed considering the sharing of story shear forces between the boundary frame and infill plates. Adjusted seismic performance factors were required for the latter SPSWs to rigorously meet the FEMA P695 performance criteria. Most importantly, the latter SPSWs were found to have a higher probability to suffer significantly larger interstory drift than the former. This research extends work reported in “Impact of Horizontal Boundary Elements Design on Seismic Behavior of Steel Plate Shear Walls” by R. Purba and M. Bruneau, MCEER-10-0007. The finite element analysis was performed using the software ABAQUS/Standard while the collapse assessment was performed using the software OpenSees.