An Investigation into the Impact of Fire on Lateral Stability and Strength of Thin Steel Plate Shear Walls

The SPSWs have been enthusiastically applied in some of the tall buildings across the world as a novel lateral load-bearing system and due to their proper stiffness, strength, ductility, and energy absorption, as well as remarkable reduction in buildings’, weigh compared to the concrete cases, they are deemed as an efficient alternative for the traditional load-resisting systems. fire-related hazards and their impacts on the structural systems have been of major concern for practitioners which is of utmost significance for special structures and tall buildings. Accordingly, in case of thin steel plate shear walls, fire is most likely to leave detrimental effects on the lateral stability and strength of them due to their small values of thickness. To better understand the behavior of such systems in the event of a fire, this paper aims to investigate the impact of heat caused by a fire on the stability, elastic stiffness and yield strength of a 3-storey frame equipped with SPSW system. Based on the results derived by connected stress-heat analyses, thickening the wall results in substantial reduction in the column’s deformations. Moreover, increase in thickness and yield strength of the steel plate plays an effective role in less reduction in yield strength and elastic stiffness of the system after fire events although, while the plate thickness is kept constant, the system’s elastic stiffness does not vary as the yield strength raises. In addition, simple relations were achieved to estimate the post-fire elastic stiffness and yield strength of the SPSW system.