Perforated Steel Plate Shear Walls for Tunable Seismic Resistance

Steel plate shear walls (SPSW) offer numerous advantages as a seismic force resisting system for buildings such as reduced construction time, reduced gravity loads, and reduced foundation size as compared to concrete shear walls. Compared to concentrically braced frames, SPSW offer exceptional strength in short lengths of walls, improved ductility, and improved energy absorbing capability. However, current SPSW structures often use very thin web plates, experience buckling early in their response, have highly pinched hysteretic behavior, necessitate large beams and columns, and require moment connections. A new type of perforated steel plate shear wall is investigated that includes either circular perforations or butterfly shaped cutouts along the perimeter of the infill plate. The perimeter perforations reduce the strength of the plate while preserving the stiffness of the system thus allowing the use of thicker plate and simple shear beamto-column connections. Furthermore, the response characteristics of the system such as strength, stiffness, ductility, and energy dissipation are tunable by varying the size and spacing of the perforations. The concepts for both configurations are presented. A parametric study was performed, varying the perforation geometry and plate thickness. Results suggest that both configurations demonstrate tunability and improved performance relative to conventional SPSW.