Analysis of Thin-Steel-Plate Shear Walls

Thin plate panels in steel-plate shear walls buckle at very small load and the strength of the wall is based on the postbuckling strength of its plate panels. The plate panels can be modeled using equivalent truss elements in the diagonal tension direction. The load-elongation characteristics of these elements are elastic, elastoplastic, and perfectly plastic. The load-elongation characteristics were derived using a strip-gusset element. The gusset area represents the shear zone close to the supported boundaries, which yields in shear before buckling. The load-elongation characteristics for walls where the plate panels are welded to the surrounding beams and columns are different than for walls with bolted plate panels. Test specimens were modeled using the equivalent truss element and the analytical results compared, to a good degree of accuracy, with the test results for monotonic as well as cyclic loading.