Shear response of expanded metal panels

• Shear strength of expanded metal panels investigated herein.
• The analysis cover standard and flattened expanded metal meshes.
• Flattened panels have unstable membrane buckling responses.
• Standard panels develop a stable local cell collapse mechanism.
• The paper examines the suitability of expanded metal panels for steel plate shear walls.

This paper aims at investigating the quasi-static shear response of expanded metal panels. A nonlinear finite element analysis of standard and flattened expanded metal panels subjected to shear loads is conducted. For both panel types, the influence of the cell orientation is also analyzed. Numerical models are validated against experimental results available in the literature. Thereafter, the numerical models are used to study the structural behavior of the expanded metal shear panels in depth. Furthermore, a parametric analysis is conducted in order to investigate the influence of cell geometry parameters and panel size on the shear response of the panels. The results show that shear response depends mainly of cell geometry and panel length, whereas the effect of the panel height is almost negligible. Finally, the results are also used to examine the suitability of expanded metal panels for steel plate shear walls.