Experimental seismic performance of steel- and composite steel-panel wall strengthened steel frames

This paper presents an experimental study to investigate the seismic performance of steel- and composite steel-panel wall strengthened steel frames (SPWF and CPWF). A detailed experimental investigation of five 1/3-scaled specimens with one-bay and single-story was conducted. The failure modes, load-carrying capacity, hysteretic behavior, ductility, energy dissipation capacity were presented and analyzed. The effects of the length-to-height ratio, stiffeners, and the type of walls on the seismic behavior were also investigated. The experimental results show that the specimens tolerate 4% to approximately 5% story drift, the steel- and composite steel-panel wall improved the seismic performance of the steel frame. The length-to-height ratio has had large effect on load-carrying capacity, initial stiffness, ductility and response modification factor. In addition, finite element (FE) models of SPWFs and CPWFs were established to simulate their nonlinear behavior, and the results were verified by the experimental results. The failure mode obtained from the numerical simulation was in accordance with the experimental phenomenon. Furthermore, formulas were developed to estimate initial lateral stiffness and shear strength of the test specimens, and such theoretical predictions were verified by the experimental results.