11.24: Impact of column flexural stiffness on behaviour of steel plate shear walls

ABSTRACT In the past 40 years steel plate shear walls (SPSW) have seen increased application as vertical stabilization systems of structures. Steel plate shear walls (SPSW) may be considered as vertically installed cantilever composed of boundary frame elements (beams and columns) and very slender steel infill panel. In the past, the loss of stability of the infill plate was prevented by adding vertical and horizontal stiffeners, while the present application relies on post‐critical tension field action of the infill panel. For cost‐effective implementation of steel plate shear wall (SPSW) systems the infill steel panel needs to be completely utilized through ability of tension field formation over the entire steel plate. Due to such load bearing mechanism additional transverse forces are exerted on boundary frame members. Hence, in order to ensure expansion of the tension field throughout the entire infill panel the required minimal flexural stiffness of boundary frame element cross‐section shall be met. This requirement is based on assumptions valid for plate girders, where previous studies, indicate that for steel plate shear walls (SPSW) this requirement could be conservative or even completely unnecessary. This paper presents the results of experimental and numerical research. Laboratory testing included two different specimen groups. In order to determine the influence of the infill panel on the behaviour of moment resisting frame (MRF) three steel moment resisting frame (MRF) specimens were tested in the first group, while experiments of the second group included three steel plate shear wall (SPSW) specimens. In each specimen group flexural stiffness of the boundary columns was varied. Experimental results show that steel plate shear wall (SPSW) specimens whose boundary columns do not meet the required minimal flexural stiffness exhibited small “pull‐in” of their columns. Furthermore, the experimental data was used to calibrate numerical models that have been used for additional parametric numerical analyses. Specifically, the influences of three column flexural stiffness values as well as two steel grades of the infill panel were investigated for five different aspect ratio (L/H) values. Impact of the above parameters was assessed through comparison of residual relative horizontal displacement profiles.