investigating the behavior of semi-supported steel plate shear walls compounded of two flat and two corrugated plates: a numerical and parametrical study

Despite the considerable advantages of the steel plate shear wall (spsw), this system suffers from two shortcomings; the imposed large stresses from the infill plate to the boundary columns and the low elastic bucking capacity of the infill plate. although several techniques have been proposed to solve this problem, they have their own limitations. in this study, a new type of semi-supported spsw was proposed and discussed numerically and parametrically. the proposed spsw consists of the main frame and wall (including corrugated and flat plates and secondary columns). since the wall is not directly attached to the main frame, no stress is transferred from the plates to the columns. due to combining the corrugated and flat plates, the elastic buckling of the wall is increased up to a nearby fully yielding wall. as a result, a more economical system is achieved. the effects of loading patterns as well as the number of stories (low to mid-rise structures) were investigated. the numerical simulations and analyses were performed using the finite element software package abaqus. the results indicated that the structures under the uniform loading pattern show a 27% stiffer response than that under the triangular loading pattern. also, by increasing the height of structures, the effect of the loading pattern is increased, which reaches 37%. in addition, a simple model for analysis of the proposed system was proposed in which the steel infill plate is replaced by a truss member. this method speeds up the analysis and design of structures. comparison of the finite element results and the proposed model indicates the high accuracy of the proposed method.