Experimental study of ring-shaped steel plate shear walls

• Ring-shaped steel plate shear walls (RS-SPSW) are a new seismic resisting system.
• An experimental program was conducted to validate and investigate the concept.
• Results show that RS-SPSW are capable of producing full hysteretic behavior.
• Two buckling modes are identified and correlated to slenderness ratios.
• RS-SPSW show promise as a tunable seismic force resisting system.

A new type of steel plate shear wall (SPSW) has been developed which resists out-of-plane buckling. The ring-shaped steel plate shear wall (RS-SPSW) includes a steel web plate that is cut with a pattern of holes leaving ring-shaped portions of steel connected by diagonal links. The ring shape resists out-of-plane buckling through the mechanics of how a circular ring deforms into an ellipse. It is shown that the ring’s compression diagonal will shorten a similar amount as the tension diagonal elongates, essentially eliminating the slack in the direction perpendicular to the tension field. Because of the unique features of the ring’s mode of distortion, the load-deformation response of the resulting RS-SPSW system can exhibit full hysteretic behavior and possess greatly improved stiffness relative to thin unstiffened SPSW. The concept has been validated through testing on seven approximately 1 m × 1 m RS-SPSW panels and compared to the experimental response of a solid plate panel. General conclusions about the influence of different geometric parameters on plate behavior are made including limits on geometry that produce desirable hysteretic response.

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