Nonlinear behavior of steel plate shear wall connected to frame beams only under Various Loading conditions

In the present paper, the behavior of steel shear walls connected to frame beams only was investigated under various loading conditions (nonlinear static, cyclic and blast) using the finite element method and compared with that of the corresponding system with fully-connected infill walls (typical SPSW). The obtained results were discussed in terms of strength, initial stiffness, ductility, max of Von-Mises stress and max of in-plane and out-of-plane deformations. In the study, the effects of different system aspect ratios and various infill plate thicknesses were also considered. The adequacy of the finite element modeling approach for representing the responses of SPSWs under loading conditions was verified through comparison with experimental results. Results of pushover analyses showed that releasing of the infill wall connection to the columns limits the widespread yielding of the infill plate. This, in turn, affects the strength, initial stiffness and ductility of the system. Notably, the behavior of SPSW frames is not affected much by such configuration. Increasing the infill plate thickness in proportion to the decrease of its strength, not only offsets the effect of this configuration on the system strength, but also improves the system behavior in terms of initial stiffness and ductility (compared to the corresponding system with infill plate connected to boundary columns and beams). Results of cyclic analyses showed that the dissipated energy by the semi-connected SPSW is relatively decreased mainly due to the decrease of plate strength and energy absorption. Results of analyses under blast loading condition showed that both fully-connected and semi-connected SPSWs designed for seismic loading can partially resist against out-of-plane blast loading effects without failure.