Cyclic loading test and lateral resistant behavior of flat-corrugated steel plate shear walls

Corrugated plate shear walls (CPSWs) can achieve large initial lateral stiffness, high resistance, and good energy dissipation capacity. However, severe post-buckling resistance degradation of the infill corrugated panel compromises the lateral resistant behavior of CPSWs with a large width-to-height ratio. To solve this problem, this paper proposed an innovative flat-corrugated steel plate shear wall (FCPSW), in which the infill panel is composed of a middle trapezoidal corrugated steel plate and two flat steel plates covering both sides by bolts. Cyclic loading tests were carried out for a FCPSW specimen and a CPSW specimen, to reveal the hysteretic behavior, failure mode and the restraining mechanism between the corrugated plate and the flat plates. Then, finite element analysis (FEA) was adopted to simulate the tests and investigate the effect of key parameters on the lateral resistant behavior of the infill flat-corrugated panel in FCPSWs under cyclic loading. The study showed that, the infill flat-corrugated panel utilized the inter-action between the corrugated plate and the flat plates, to effectively reduce the out-of-plane buckling deformation and improve the lateral performance. The normalized residual resistance of the FCPSW specimen can be increased by 50% compared to the ordinary CPSW specimen. The material yield stress, the bolt spacing, the corrugation length, the corrugation inclined angle and the thickness ratio of the infill plates were the key factors affecting the hysteretic performance of the flat-corrugated panel, while effects of the width-to-height ratio and the corrugation ratio was reduced compared to the conventional CPSWs. The design suggestions proposed can avoid un-stable post-buckling behavior of the infill panel in FCPSWs and provide a simple and feasible method in the preliminary design.