Hysteretic behavior study of slit steel plate shear walls

Creating slits in steel plate shear walls is a new way to improve the seismic performance of these walls. The creation of slits turns the steel sheet into a number of links, each of which dissipate the seismic energy at both ends of the links. In this study, the effect of slit location and orientation on the cyclic behavior of steel shear panels is considered. For this purpose, in a laboratory study, the effect of slits location in the central area (conventional method), in the middle of the boundary elements or sheet corners on the stiffness, strength and capacity of energy dissipation and drift corresponding to the start of sheet rupture was investigated. Experimental results show that, contrary to the conventional method with slits located in the central area of the sheet, changing the location of the slits leads to a fundamental improvement in the seismic performance parameters of the wall. The best performance is observed for the specimen with slits in the middle of the boundary elements and with parallel set of slits. The increase in the strength and drift is 39 and 100%, respectively, for the specimen with parallel set of slits in the middle of the boundary elements compared to the conventional specimen with slits in the center of the sheet. Better performance could be expected with optimization of slits spacing and patterns.