Experimental and Numerical Study of Stiffened Steel Plate Shear Walls with Rectangular Openings

Abstract

Steel plate shear walls (SPSWs) often need to accommodate rectangular openings in their infill plates. When subjected to lateral loadings, such as wind and earthquake, unstiffened SPSWs with rectangular openings may experience large deformations around the openings. This paper presents a stiffener layout to limit the deformations around the rectangular openings in the SPSW system. The effectiveness of the proposed stiffener layout is investigated by conducting experimental tests on two one-third-scale single-story SPSWs with rectangular openings at the center of the infill plates. The two specimens have the same aspect ratio but have different rectangular opening sizes. To prevent deformations around the rectangular openings, the infill plates of the two test specimens are stiffened with the proposed stiffener layout. Quasi-static cyclic loading tests are performed on the specimens, and the deformations around the openings are measured at different loading stages. Tests showed that the proposed stiffener layout can successfully restrain the deformations around the rectangular openings. The specimens also showed stable hysteresis curves and good energy-dissipation capacity. To further examine the inelastic performance of the proposed stiffener layout, finite-element analysis of stiffened SPSWs is conducted. Seismic analyses are also performed for 4-story stiffened and unstiffened SPSWs with rectangular openings to investigate the seismic response of SPSWs with the proposed stiffener layout around the openings. Seismic analyses showed that the proposed stiffener layout around the rectangular openings can prevent the out-of-plane and in-plane deformations around the openings in the SPSW system.