Perforated steel plate shear walls with curved corrugated webs under cyclic loading

Abstract Steel Plate Shear Walls (SPSWs) are traditionally designed with vertical infill plates, which are connected to the surrounding frame and can be stiffened or unstiffened. Recently, the application of plates with different geometrical shapes and perforations has attracted the attention in the literature with the aim of understanding the behavior of high-performing SPSW systems. However, detailed and systematic investigations are still required to fully understand the behavior of such relatively new lateral-force-resisting systems, further complicated by the introduction of perforations. This paper addresses this issue, with the structural performance of curve-corrugated SPSWs with centrally-placed opening being the subject of investigation. The research described herein describes 128 nonlinear finite element models of SPSWs, analyzed under cyclic and monotonic loading. The effects associated with web corrugation angle, thickness, and opening size on the buckling, yielding, strength, and stiffness performances, hysteresis behavior, and energy dissipation characteristics of SPSWs are investigated. It is shown that consideration of 90° corrugation angle and larger web-plate thicknesses can be beneficial. However, having a panel perforation layout as a web plate and increasing the perforation size can adversely affect the performance of such systems. Overall, curved-corrugated SPSWs with web perforations are found to be a good structural system, and a desirable performance can be ensured through proper design variables and detailing each component of the system.