Seismic Performance of Coupled Steel Plate Shear Walls with Different Degrees of Coupling

Abstract

In a coupled steel plate shear wall, the interaction between two steel plate shear wall piers enabled by the coupling beams improves the overturning capacity of the lateral force–resisting system. Furthermore, the boundary frames and coupling beams contribute significantly to the lateral strength of the system. This study presents an equation to quantify the relationship between the overstrength of the coupled steel plate shear wall and the percentage of the lateral seismic design force resisted by the web plates alone. This equation can be used in design to proportion the strength of web plates, the boundary frames, and the coupling beams. Two coupled steel plate shear wall archetype sets with different ranges of the degree of coupling (i.e., less than 0.4 and between 0.4 and 0.6) were designed considering the contribution to lateral strength from all components and their collapse performance was evaluated. Pushover and incremental dynamic analyses were conducted. The material models for the web plates, boundary frames, and coupling beams included deterioration. The analyses indicated that the complete strength of the system (i.e., the strength of the web plates, boundary frame and coupling beams) may be considered when the degree of coupling is above 0.4. When it is lower, a minimum overstrength is necessary to ensure that the seismic performance factors provide acceptable collapse performance.