Experimental and numerical study on seismic behavior of LYS and HYS steel plate shear walls connected to frame beams only

This paper presents an experimental and numerical investigation on the steel plate shear walls with beam-only-connected web plates (SSW-BO). These systems feature an alternative to the traditional type of steel shear walls through separating the lateral load resisting system from the primary columns. A possible drawback of SSW-BO is its reduced shear capacity compared with fully-connected web plates. High yield strength (HYS) web plate may develop shear capacity of these systems. The seismic behavior of the SSW-BO systems are experimentally investigated under cyclic quasi-static loading and compared considering two material properties and two different circular opening ratios. Shear strength, ductility, and energy dissipation capacity of HYS panels are higher than those of low yield strength (LYS) panels by as much as roughly 70%, 10% and 30%, respectively. The use of HYS web plates in SSW-BO systems appeared to be a promising solution to compensate the concerns regarding the low shear capacity and low energy dissipation resulting from separation steel plate from the columns. Moreover, the finite element software ABAQUS was used to investigate the behavior of SSW-BO systems by nonlinear analysis. A comparison between the experimental and numerical results showed excellent agreement.