Panel action of novel partially connected buckling-restrained steel plate shear walls

A novel partially connected buckling-restrained steel plate shear wall as a robust and effective lateral load-resisting system is proposed in this paper. The influence of the superposition of the tension field and the high-order buckling deformation of the inner steel plate which is called “panel action” on the behavior of the new system is investigated. A modified method considering the effect of the panel action is developed to determine the minimum stiffness requirements of the vertical boundary elements so that the tension field will fairly uniformly form in the diagonal area. In addition, the nonlinear finite element method is adopted to carry out the push-over analysis to evaluate the effect of the initial imperfection on the behavior of the proposed shear wall. Meanwhile, based on the FE models validated using the available test data, an extensive parametric study is also performed to examine the effect of a change in the second moment of area of VBEs on the behavior of the novel shear wall. Finally, the FE results are compared with that predicted by the proposed method and a reasonable agreement is generally achieved between them.