Parametric study of crack growth effect on steel plate shear wall

Experimental and numerical study have carried out on behavior of Steel Plate Shear Wall (SPSW) and also, its good performance during past earthquakes have been testified a capable system against lateral load. The system have high ductility, stiffness and strength under seismic loading during a sever earthquake. Although, enormous studies have been performed till now, there are several unkhown problems about this system. Effect of crack on SPSW behavior is obviously one of the important between the unkhowns that have considerable effect on the behavior of SPSW. Therefore, in this study the effect of crack on SPSW is investigated. Results indicated that central crack is more critical than edge cracks. The results show that long central cracks cause the system fails in a brittle manner. In addition, a model have been proposed to obtain load-displacement curve without finite element modeling. On the proposed model the crack and its propagation is consider.