in-plane deformation of stiffeners around opening in steel shear panels

The main objective of this research is to study the in-plane deformation of stiffeners around opening edges in steel plate shear panels (spsps) with rectangular openings. first, analytical formulations are developed to calculate the in-plane deformation of stiffeners around the openings. to limit the in-plane deformation of the main stiffeners around the opening, a novel concept of introducing secondary stiffeners perpendicular to the main stiffeners around the opening is also investigated analytically. for the analytical study, the main stiffeners are considered as multi-span continuous non-prismatic beams. equations are derived to calculate in-plane deformations of the main stiffeners for different numbers and layouts of the secondary stiffeners. the developed analytical equations can be used by the design engineers when designing spsw with rectangular openings to estimate in-plane deformation of stiffeners. in the second part of this research, the results of experimental tests of three single bay single story stiffened ssp specimens with central rectangular openings with various opening ratios under quasi-static cyclic loading are presented to study the in-plane deformation of the stiffeners around the opening edges. based on the tests and analytical studies, it can be concluded that the maximum in-plane deformation of the main stiffeners around the opening decreases considerably by adding the secondary stiffeners perpendicular to them. the rate of the decrease can be substantial just by adding one secondary stiffener at the mid-span of the opening. © 2021, iran university of science and technology.