Ductility and energy dissipation of perforated steel plate shear walls

Abstract

Steel plate shear wall (SPSW) that consists of boundary elements and steel plate, has been used as a structural system to resist lateral loads such as strong wind and earthquake. The capability of SPSW to resist a relatively strong earthquake has been tested in an actual earthquake when a 35-story high rise building that employed SPSW stood still during 1995 Kobe earthquake while a nearby building collapsed during the catastrophe. The need for serviceability such as piping, duct for air conditioning, heating and ventilation as well as passageway requires SPSW to be perforated. Despite the expanding research on SPSW, there is a scarcity in the research on the effect of perforations on the performance of the SPSW. The objective of this research is to determine how openings of different sizes and orientations influence energy dissipation, shear load capacity, and ductility ratio of SPSW. Earthquake resistant building must have adequate energy dissipation capacity and ductility. Analysis was carried out on six SPSW models where three of them were denoted as Model A series. These models differ in the area of the openings. The rest of the models were denoted as Model B series which have the exact area of perforation, but different orientation. In both series, ASTM A36 steel was used for the plate and ASTM A992 steel was used for the boundary elements. The results were obtained with the aid of ABAQUS software application. Lateral loads were allowed in a cyclic orientation applied to a single side of the structure following the protocols of ATC 24. It is concluded that certain sizes of openings enhance the energy dissipation and ductility ratio. Model B3 which has the smallest dimension of the opening perpendicular to the load has the largest energy dissipation and shear load capacity but, has the smallest ductility.