Postbuckling Behavior of Steel‐Plate Shear Walls under Cyclic Loads

TLDR

Current design practice limits steel‑plate shear wall capacity to elastic buckling strength, leading to conservative designs where columns may yield before plates reach capacity, yet postbuckling strength can far exceed theoretical buckling and has not been studied under cyclic loading until recently. The study aims to develop analytical models describing steel‑plate shear wall behavior. The authors performed one test at the University of Alberta and ten at the University of Maine and formulated analytical models. The models accurately predict postbuckling behavior under both monotonic and cyclic loads.

Abstract

In current design practice the capacity of a steel‐plate shear wall is limited to the elastic buckling strength of its plate panels. This practice results not only in a conservative design, but also in an undesirable one where the columns yield and may buckle before the plate reaches a fraction of its capacity. Plate buckling is not synonymous with failure and if the plate is adequately supported along its boundaries, as in the case of the shear wall, the postbuckling strength can be several times the theoretical buckling strength. Furthermore, due to the unavoidable out‐of‐plane imperfections, no change in the plate behavior will be observed at the theoretically calculated buckling load. Although the post‐buckling behavior of plates under monotonic loads has been under investigation for more than half a century, this behavior under cyclic loading has not been investigated until recently. One test was conducted at the University of Alberta and 10 tests were conducted at the University of Maine. In this paper analytical models are described. These models are capable of accurately predicting the behavior of the wall in the postbuckling domain under monotonic and cyclic loads.