Study of effects of beam-column connection and column rigidity on the performance of SPSW system

Abstract

Steel plate shear walls (SPSWs) are efficient lateral-force resisting systems with high stiffness, strength, and ductility performances as well as energy-absorption capacity. Proper design and detailing of the plate and frame components is crucial to ensure the favorable yielding and stability performances of such elements, desirable plate-frame yielding sequence as well as interaction, and consequently high performance of the overall system. This paper presents a study on the effects of yielding strength of plate and frame elements, plate thickness, and beam-to-column connections on the structural behavior and capacity of SPSWs. Numerous SPSW models with different yielding strength of plate and frame elements, plate thickness, and simple and rigid beam-to-column connections are designed and analyzed using finite element method. The ultimate capacities of the SPSW models are approximately obtained through the plastic analysis of the system. It is demonstrated in this study that a rigid beam-to-column connection can improve the strength performance of an SPSW system and that proper sizing of the frame components, especially columns, can increase the ultimate capacity by 5–35%. The effectiveness of the application of the column rigidity parameter, RCP, in the design of column components against buckling is also investigated. It is shown that RCP ≤1 can ensure the full development of web tension-field action as well as desirable plate-frame interaction, which can consequently contribute to the high performance of the SPSW system.