Structural behaviour of stiffened steel plate shear wall under cyclic loading

Abstract

The structural behaviour of stiffened steel plate shear wall (SPSW) with various stiffener configurations and manipulated parameters under cyclic loading was investigated by using nonlinear inelastic analysis. The main objective of the study is to investigate the effect of diagonal stiffeners with different configuration, thickness, width, and total cross-sectional area to energy dissipation, lateral displacement, ductility ratio, and lateral load capacity of SPSW under cyclic loading. The study focus on single and multiple diagonal stiffeners. Finite element models of the SPSWs were developed as two-dimensional element models and were analysed by using ABAQUS commercial software. The cross-sectional properties of the boundary elements and the thickness of infill steel plate remained constant for all models. Three different configurations of the stiffeners were used while the width and thickness of the stiffeners were varied. Cyclic horizontal loading was applied in accordance to ATC24 - Guidelines for Cyclic Seismic Testing of Components of Steel Structures at the top of the SPSW models and the lateral displacement at the top of the SPSW was recorded. Hysteresis curves of all models were plotted to determine energy dissipation, lateral displacement, lateral load capacity and ductility ratio. Finally, the result of the study indicates that the energy dissipation of the SPSWs models was increased between 9 percent to 56 percent when diagonal stiffeners with different cross-sectional dimensions were added. The main factors that influence the value of the energy dissipation are the number of stiffeners followed by the thickness of the stiffeners. Lateral load capacity of the models was affected significantly only when the total cross-sectional area of the stiffeners was larger than 1600 mm2. Moreover, the ductility ratio of the diagonally stiffened SPSWs that had the same total cross-sectional area, and the same number of stiffeners, increased when the thickness of the infill plate was 10 mm, instead of 5 mm.