Steel Plate Shear Walls with Various Infill Plate Designs

Abstract

An experimental study was performed to investigate the structural capacity of steel plate walls with various infill plate designs. Five three-story steel plate shear walls with thin infill plates were tested. The parameters for this test were the connection method between the boundary frame and the infill plate (welded connection versus bolted connection), length of the welded connection (full connection versus partial connection), and opening in the infill plate (solid wall versus coupled wall). Regardless of the infill plate design, the steel plate wall specimens exhibited excellent strength, deformation capacity, and energy dissipation capacity, although the walls with bolt-connected infill plates exhibited a slightly lower deformation capacity. This result indicates that for architectural reasons and enhancement of constructability, various infill plate designs can be used in practice without a significant reduction in the structural capacity of the steel plate walls. The strength and energy dissipation capacity of the steel plate wall specimens with various infill plate designs were predicted by proposed methods. The prediction results were compared with the test results.