Local elastic buckling coefficients of steel plates in composite steel plate shear walls

The system of a steel plate bolted to a Reinforced Concrete (RC) shear wall goes by the name of a ‘Composite Steel Plate Shear Wall’ (CSPSW), which is used as the lateral resisting system in tall buildings. In this system, the steel plate buckles under medium-strong earthquakes, which may lead to instability. However, the buckling load of steel plates is usually a limited criterion for the design of CSPSW. This paper reports a series of experiments on CSPSW. The experiments were used to investigate the buckling load of a steel plate bolted to one side of a high strength reinforced concrete panel. Furthermore, theoretical modeling, based on energy methods, was used to obtain the elastic buckling coefficients of steel plates with various aspect ratios under shear loading. The results were presented in graphical and tabular forms showing good agreement of theoretical modeling with experimental results. The elastic buckling coefficients can be used for determination of the number of bolts or the spacing between the bolts.