Hysteretic behavior of perforated steel plate shear walls with beam-only connected infill plates

The steel plate shear wall with beam-only connected infill plate (SSW-BO) is an innovative lateral load resisting system consisting of infill plates connected to surrounding beams and separated from the main columns. In this research, the effects of perforation diameter as well as slenderness ratios of infill plates on the hysteresis behavior of SSW-BO systems were studied experimentally. Experimental testing is performed on eight one-sixth scaled one-story SSW-BO specimens with two plate thicknesses and four different circular opening ratios at the center of the panels under fully reversed cyclic quasi-static loading in compliance with the SAC test protocol. Strength, stiffness, ductility and energy absorption were evaluated based on the hysteresis loops. It is found that the systems exhibited stable hysteretic behavior during testing until significant damage in the connection of infill plates to surrounding beams at large drifts. It is also seen that pinching occurred in the hysteresis loops, since the hinge type connections were used as boundaries at four corners of surrounding frames. The strength and initial stiffness degradation of the perforated specimens containing opening ratio of 0.36 compared to the solid one is in the range of 20% to 30% and 40% to 50%, respectively.