A review of steel plate shear wall design requirements and research

The steel plate shear wall (SPSW) is a lateral load resisting system consisting of vertical steel plate infills connected to the surrounding beams and columns and installed in one or more bays along the full height of the structure to form a cantilever wall. The SPSWs subjected to cyclic inelastic deformations exhibit high initial stiffness, behave in a very ductile manner, and dissipate significant amounts of energy. SPSWs are used not only for the design of new buildings but they are used as indicated by recent research efforts for the retrofit of existing constructions. The typical SPSW consists of horizontal and vertical boundary elements and thin infill plates that buckle in shear and form a diagonal tension field to resist lateral loads. The only difficulty in the selection of SPSW systems is that the available panel material may be stronger or thicker than needed for a given design situation.