Experimental and Numerical Study of an Innovative Infill Web-Strips Steel Plate Shear Wall with Rigid Beam-to-Column Connections

• Published in: Buildings (Basel) Vol. 12; no. 10; p. 1560
• Main Authors: Abdul Ghafar, Wahab, Tao, Zhong, Tao, Yan, He, Yingcheng, Wu, Lei, Zhang, Zhiqi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.10.2022
• Subjects: Beam-columns; Construction costs; Cyclic loads; Design; Ductility; Earthquakes; Energy dissipation; failure mechanism; hysteresis behavior; infill web-strips steel shear wall; Lateral loads; Load; Mechanical properties; nonlinear FE analysis; parametric analysis; Parametric statistics; Postbuckling; Robustness (mathematics); Seismic activity; Seismic engineering; Seismic response; Shear strength; Shear walls; Steel; Steel plates; Steel structures; Webs (structural); Yield stress
• ISSN: 2075-5309; 2075-5309
• DOI: 10.3390/buildings12101560

Steel plate shear walls (SPSWs) offer good energy dissipation capability when subjected to seismic forces as a robust lateral load resisting structure. This research investigated the cyclic behaviors of innovative infill web-strips (IWS-SPSW) and conventional unstiffened steel plate shear (USPSW) experimentally and numerically. As a result, two specimens of a 1:3 scale three-story single-bay IWS-SPSW and USPSW were fabricated and tested under cyclic lateral loading. Rigid moment-resistant connections were used for the steel plate shear wall beam-column connection. The steel shear walls with infill web strips showed high ductility and less shear load-bearing than the USPSW. The hysteresis results showed that the IWS-SPSW had high energy dissipation with no severe beam-columns damages. On the other hand, the USPSW displayed severe post-buckling, infill panel cracks, and first-floor column damages. Moreover, the IWS-SPSW shear strength did not fall in the test specimen beyond 2.5% average story drift, where the structure exhibited great seismic behavior. FE models were created and validated with experimental data. It has been proven that the infill web-strips can affect an SPSW system’s high performance and overall energy dissipation. From a parametric study, the material features of the infill web-strips, such as steel strength and thickness, can enhance the system’s impact even more.