Study of Seismic Performance of Self-Centering Steel Plate Shear Walls at DBE and MCE

Self-Centering Steel Plate Shear Wall (SC-SPSW) is a promoted steel shear wall in which steel web plates absorb the seismic energy and Self-Centering connections bring the structure back to its original position after a ground motion. The main goals of this seismic resisting system are mitigating plastic damage in the mail structural elements such as beams and columns and reducing the residual drift after the earthquake. This paper offers a study to evaluate the efficiency of this innovative system in midrise buildings at Design Based Earthquake (DBE) and Maximum Credible Earthquake (MCE). Three archetypes which are five, seven and ten story office buildings are prepared to be representative of midrise buildings. Each archetype is designed to bear 4% gap opening at the connections. Infill plates alone can resist 100% of the specified seismic load without considering boundary frame moment resistance. Nonlinear dynamic analysis under a set of far-field ground motion consisting of seven records is performed to estimate the seismic performance of the archetypes. The results of the dynamic analysis consisting main structural damage, inter-story drift and residual drift are studied to assess the efficiency of Self-Centering Steel Plate Shear Wall. According to the analysis results, the residual drifts of all archetypes were significantly reduced and full self-centering was achieved at both DBE and MCE level. In addition, beams and columns demonstrated no plastic deformation in nonlinear dynamic analysis at DBE and MCE ground motion, which is a great achievement to keep the main structural element safe during the earthquake. Inter-story drift in the archetype was below the allowable amount suggested by seismic design code except for upper stories that could be improved by choosing proper thickness for upper web plates.