Experimental seismic study on shear walls with fully-connected and beam-only-connected web plates

Typically, in conventional steel plate shear walls (SPSWs), web plates are connected to both beams and columns; however, steel shear walls connected to beams only (SSW-BOs) with the idea of reducing surrounding columns demands and alleviating web plate damage was proposed since the mid-2000s. This paper presents an experimental investigation on seismic behavior of steel plate shear walls comprising SPSWs and SSW-BOs. Cyclic loading tests were performed on four 1:6 scaled one-story specimens with two plate thickness and two different web plate boundary conditions. The observed predominant failure modes include i: plate tearing at the corners, ii: slippage along connection zone of web plates, and iii: plate-to-frame connection bearing. Using frame connection for plates increases the energy dissipation, shear strength and elastic stiffness by up to 150%, 200% and 110% on average, respectively compared to those of beams-only connected walls. Experimental results indicate that the SSW-BO systems reached a ductility ratio of 7.3 on average, almost 1.5 times the value for SPSWs. It is demonstrated further that with an increase in the slenderness ratio (height to thickness), the strength, stiffness and energy absorbed by the SPSW and SSW-BO systems show a decreasing trend being less stiff for SSW-BO panels.