Seismic behavior of steel plate shear wall with reduced boundary beam section

In this paper a steel plate shear walls (SPSWs) with specific type of reduced beam section is proposed. The perimeter framing configuration around the steel plate shear wall plays an important role in the ductility of system. In order to prevent brittle failure of beam-column connection, the beam section is weakened with different methods. The methods included the reduction of the beam section with circular and elliptical web openings, vertical slots in the web and also the reduction of the beam flange. The nonlinear finite element analysis results showed that the model with slots in the beam web has the best performance in terms of ductility, energy absorption, stiffness and shear strength than the other proposed models. Parametric study is carried on the geometry of the slots and some design limitations proposed on the size and location of slots, based on the analysis results. The analysis results on different models showed that the slotted beam models could reach to an average story drift of 4%, which is a high value for a steel shear wall system. The results showed that most effective parameter is the length of slotted region. The use of proposed slotted beam model in shear walls with different story height to length ratios are studied, and concluded that decreasing the height to length ratio of the wall results in decrease of ductility. Push-over analysis is also carried on a four-story steel plate shear wall system with and without slots in the beam. Results showed that in the slotted beam model the plastic strain can be fully distributed among the steel plate shear wall and the slotted part of the beam web, the connections remaining elastic, at 4% story drift.