Hysteretic behavior of coupled steel plate shear walls

Abstract

The coupled steel plate shear wall (CSPSW) is an efficient lateral load resisting system consisting of two or several steel plate shear walls connected to each other in story levels in order to increase the lateral strength. In this paper, 4-story capacity designed CSPSWs are considered with different cross section size and lengths for coupling beams to capture shear, flexural and shear-flexural failure modes in these members. The specimens are modeled using nonlinear finite element method and analyzed under cyclic loading. A comparison of performance characteristics including shear strength, plasticity factor, energy dissipation, stiffness variation and Von-Mises stress distribution of models are presented. According to the results, the shear resistance and energy dissipation of models increases with the increase of capacity and length of coupling beams. The difference between FE shear resistance and the predictions from theoretical calculations decreased as the capacity and length of coupling beams increased. With an increase in the coupling beam capacity and/or decrease of its length the wall deformations was changed from shear into flexural mode. The hysteretic behavior of coupling beams leads to the suggestion of these beams rotation as design criteria of CSPSWs.