Investigating the behavior of boundary elements in steel shear walls with different connections

In the recent five decades, steel shear walls have been one of the most important systems in the construction and rehabilitation of many structures. The system has many advantages including high strength and stiffness, high ductility and excellent energy dissipation capacity. Steel shear walls are made and executed in different types. These include walls with and without stiffeners as well as composites. Recent research shows that they are a type of steel shear wall in which the infill plate is slightly away from the boundary members. In fact, there is no connection between the infill plate and one of boundary members. Therefore, in this study, the behavior of traditional one-story-one-span steel shear walls with 4 different lengths was investigated. For comparison, walls in which the sheet was attached only to a beam or column were examined. Obtained results from the study showed that the lateral bearing capacity of samples with free beam or free column is less than that of samples with full connection, on average 20%. Also, the strength of the samples with free column is slightly higher than the samples with free beam. In addition, boundary members, especially columns, are much less affected by forces in free-column specimens than in other specimens, and this could decreases economical costs.

An innovative system of coupled steel plate shear wall with pin FUSE in link beam: Cyclic behavior and energy dissipation

Coupled steel plate shear wall (C-SPSW) is one of the resisting systems with high ductility and energy absorption capacity. Energy dissipation in the C-SPSW system is accomplished by the bending and shear behavior of the link beams and SPSW. Energy dissipation and floor displacement control occur through link beams at low seismic levels, easily replaced after an earthquake. In this study, an innovative coupled steel plate shear wall with a yielding FUSE is presented. The system uses a high-ductility FUSE pin element instead of a link beam, which has good replaceability after the earthquake. In this study, four models of coupled steel plate shear walls were investigated with I-shaped link beam, I-shaped link beam with reduced beam section (RBS), box-link beam with RBS, and FUSE pin element under cyclic loading. The finite element method was used through ABAQUS software to develop the C-SPSW models. Two test specimens of coupled steel plate shear walls were validated to verify the finite element method results. Comparative results of the hysteresis curves obtained from the finite element analysis with the experimental curves indicated that the finite element model offered a good prediction of the hysteresis behavior of C-SPSW. It is demonstrated in this study that the FUSE pin can improve and increase the strength and energy dissipation of a C-SPSW system by 19% and 20%, respectively.