Behaviour of Steel Plate Shear Walls with Composite Columns

Abstract

Research on conventional steel plate shear walls has developed recently to the point where their behaviour is reasonably well understood. However, the potential exists to design steel plate shear walls to take advantage of the benefits of composite columns and in this regard, considerably less information is available to designers. In addition to increasing the axial capacity of the columns, the presence of the concrete increases their flexural stiffness, thereby providing good anchorage for the development of the post-buckling capacity of the infill plate without requiring overly deep members. This research program was initiated with the aim of making partially encased composite columns a viable option available to steel plate shear wall designers. The research program involves the design and testing of three steel plate shear walls with partially encased composite columns as the vertical boundary elements. Gravity loads are applied to the columns and the steel plate shear walls are then loaded laterally under gradually increasing cyclic loads to failure. The paper describes some preliminary results of the completed first test, as well as plans for a test on a modular wall, fabricated primarily with erection economy in mind, and a test with reduced beam sections incorporated into the horizontal boundary elements.