Hysteresis model of a novel partially connected buckling-restrained steel plate shear wall

•A novel partially connected buckling restrained steel plate shear wall is proposed.•An equivalent brace model is provided with modified hysteresis properties.•A high-order buckling mode is considered into the equivalent brace model.•The effect of initial imperfection on buckling mode is studied.

An equivalent brace model is developed to evaluate the nonlinear behavior of a novel partially connected buckling-restrained steel plate shear wall (BRSPSW) subjected to seismic loading. The high-order buckling modes of the equivalent brace under compression are taken into account meanwhile a hysteresis model is proposed to describe the stress–strain relationship of the equivalent brace. A nonlinear finite element (FE) method is employed to establish the validity of the partially connected BRSPSWs with the equivalent braces under monotonic, cyclic and seismic loads. A comparison with the FE results shows that the equivalent brace model with the proposed hysteresis properties can reasonably predict the shear resistance, hysteretic and seismic behaviors of the novel partially connected BRSPSWs. The effect of initial imperfection on the buckling responses of the restrained steel plate is also investigated. Nonlinear push-over analyses show that the increase of the initial imperfection essentially triggers the buckling mode of the restrained steel plate from high order to low order.