Testing of Full-Scale Two-Story Steel Plate Shear Wall with Reduced Beam Section Connections and Composite Floors

Abstract

A two-phase experimental program was generated on a full-scale two-story steel plate shear wall with reduced beam section connections and composite floors, to experimentally address the replaceability of infill panels following an earthquake and the seismic behavior of the intermediate beam. In Phase I, the specimen was pseudodynamically tested, subjected to three ground motions of progressively decreasing intensity. The buckled panels were replaced by new panels prior to submitting the specimen to a subsequent pseudodynamic test and cyclic test to failure in Phase II. It is shown that the repaired specimen can survive and dissipate significant amounts of hysteretic energy in a subsequent earthquake without severe damage to the boundary frame or overall strength degradation. It is also found that the specimen had exceptional redundancy and exhibited stable force-displacement behavior up to the story drifts of 5.2 and 5.0% at the first and second story, respectively. Experimental results from pseudodynamic and cyclic tests are compared to seismic performance predictions obtained from a dual strip model using tension only strips and from a monotonic pushover analysis using a three-dimensional finite-element model, respectively, and good agreement is observed.