An Analytical and Numerical Study on Effect of Thickness and Concrete Type of Panels on Behavior of Composite Steel Plate Shear Walls

The composite steel plate shear wall (CSPSW) is an innovative lateral load-resisting system which is comprised of reinforced concrete (RC) panels attached to one or both sides of the system by means of shear connectors. Accordingly, in the CSPSW, the RC panels prevent buckling of the steel plate and thus, shear capacity of the plate improves by the shear yielding limit of the plate instead of tension in direction of diagonal tension field. Subsequently, this study is aimed to analytically and numerically investigate the effect of thickness and concrete type of panels on the behavior of the CSPSW. To this end, 27 numerical models of CSPSWs with varying thickness of steel plate and concrete panels as well as width-to-height (W/H) ratio of 0.75, 1 and 1.5 have been built using ABAQUS software and then, analyzed through pushover analysis method. The results indicate that in all W/H ratios, the energy absorption of the models with a plate thickness of 6mm surpasses the others. Importantly, it was found that the response modification factor of the CSPSW is estimated to be 13.5. Lastly, a semi-empirical relationship was proposed to calculate the thickness of the RC panel based on that of the steel plate so that plate buckling could be prevented.