Nonlinear Finite Element Modeling of Novel Partially Connected Buckling-Restrained Steel Plate Shear Walls

It has been demonstrated that the buckling-restrained steel plate shear wall (SPSW) is an efficient and economic lateral load-resisting system exhibiting high performance on initial stiffness, ductility, shear resistance, and energy dissipation capacity. In present study, a novel partially connected buckling-restrained SPSW is presented to reduce the stiffness requirement for the vertical boundary elements. Meanwhile, nonlinear finite element (FE) analysis is performed to evaluate the behavior of the proposed shear wall system so that a large expense of conducting additional test can be saved. The experimental results from the literature and the test conducted by the authors are used to establish the validation of FE models. Based on the validated FE models, a further extensive parametric study is carried out to investigate the effect of initial imperfection, stiffness of boundary elements, slenderness ratio (Height/Thickness) of the infill panel, aspect ratio (Height/Width) of the infill panel, RC cover panel thickness and bolt spacing on the behavior of the partially connected buckling-restrained SPSW.