Experimental study of steel plate shear walls with composite steel infill platesunder cyclic loading

In this paper, nonlinear behavior of composite steel plate shear wall systems, in which steel infill plate is strengthened by fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) layers, are experimentally investigated. Tests are designed to evaluate the effect of glass-FRP layers, layers number of GFRP and orientation of GFRP layers on the stiffness, shear strength, cumulative dissipated energy and other seismic parameters in the composite steel plate shear wall. Experimental models are scaled one-story steel shear panel model, with hinge type connections of boundary elements at four corners. In the first test, unstiffened steel infill plate is used for test. In the next four tests, strengthened steel infill plates are being used with different number and orientation of GFRP layers. Each test was performed under fully reversed cyclic quasi-static loading in the elastic and inelastic response zones of the specimens, in compliance with ATC-24 (1992) test protocol. The experimental results indicate that by strengthening infill steel plate yield strength, ultimate shear strength and cumulative dissipated energy can be significantly increased.