Seismic behavior of novel partially connected buckling-restrained steel plate shear walls

A partially connected buckling-restrained steel plate shear wall (SPSW) consisting of an internal steel plate connected to two external reinforced concrete cover plates by bolts, is proposed. Only the four corners of the inner steel plate are connected to the boundary frame elements so that the steel plate can develop tension field action and to reduce potential damage to the surrounding frame elements under cyclic lateral loads. Two one-third scaled specimens were tested to quasi-static cyclic loading to investigate the hysteretic behavior of the proposed new lateral load resisting system. The test results show that the proposed partially connected buckling-restrained SPSW exhibits high initial stiffness, adequate ductility, good energy adsorption capacity, and stable hysteresis loop. Based on the observed failure modes and test results, a theoretical model in which the high-order shear buckling modes of the inner steel plate is developed to predict the shear resistance of the inner panel. The experimental results are compared with the predicted results in order to establish its accuracy in predicting the response behavior of the partially connected buckling-restrained SPSW under lateral loads.