Design of steel plate shear walls considering boundary frame moment resisting action

Conventional design of steel plate shear walls (SPSWs) assumes that 100% of the story shear is resisted by each infill panel. Following this approach, strength provided by the boundary frame moment resisting action, which provides the SPSW with overstrength, is neglected. While this design assumption has a positive impact on seismic performance of SPSWs, no analytical work has been done to quantify the magnitude of this overstrength in general terms. Such preliminary work is conducted in this paper. Based on plastic analysis of SPSWs, this paper investigates the relative and respective contributions of boundary frame moment resisting action and infill panel tension field action to the overall plastic strength of SPSWs, followed by a proposed procedure to make use of the strength provided by the boundary frame moment resisting action. Procedures for design of SPSWs having weak infill panels are also developed in this paper. Then, results from a series of time history analyses using validated models are presented to compare the seismic performances of SPSWs designed using different design assumptions. Future work needed to provide greater insight on SPSW designs is also identified.