Effect of Stiffeners on Contribution of Peripheral Frame and Seismic Behavior of Stiffened Steel Plate Shear Wall

Using Stiffener in steel plate shear wall (SPSW) improves seismic behavior of the system. The transferred force from the steel plate to the peripheral frame is one of challenging topics that discussed by the designers in optimal design of SPSW. Particularly, with the insertion of stiffeners, the amount of transferred force to the columns significantly reduced by the building codes. In this paper, the seismic behavior of a 10-story building with stiffened SPSW investigated in three different design phases. In the first phase, seismic design requirements of American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) considered with the maximum permissible spacing between the stiffeners. In the second phase, the reductive effects of the building code on transferred forces to the peripheral frame ignored and instead, the minimum required stiffness of peripheral frame considered similar to SPSW without stiffeners. In the third phase, the distance between the stiffeners increased and the optimal design philosophy discussed. In this way, the designer can manage the yielding or buckling of the steel plate. Therefore, the capacity of the floor will be a combination of shear buckling and yield capacity of plate. Plate-Frame Interaction (PFI) theory and finite element tools approved that the peripheral frame design forces and its contribution in seismic behavior of system can vary according to distance of stiffeners.