Effects of Infill Plate’s Interconnection and Boundary Element Stiffness on Steel Plate Shear Walls’ Seismic Performance

Abstract

Steel plate shear walls (SPSWs) are among the most desirable load-bearing systems, which have been used wildly in various structures. Recently, designers have tended to SPSWs with only beam connections showing several problems. In the present research, several SPSWs with various types of connection conditions between infill plate and boundary elements, and various stiffness of boundary elements have been studied. The result illustrates that by having the full connection between infill plate and boundary elements, at least a 33% interconnected infill plate to columns could eliminate the significant loss of fundamental factors in SPSWs connected to beam only. Furthermore, increasing the stiffness of columns has more effect on the performance of SPSWs in comparison with beams.