Shear-carrying capacity of steel plate shear wall with cross stiffeners

Since 1980s, many theoretical and experimental investigations on monotonic and hysteretic behavior of thin steel plate shear wall (SPSW) have been conducted. However, to the author's knowledge, very few researches have been found in the thin or moderate thick SPSW with cross stiffeners. Inelastic large displacement FE method by using ANSYS package is employed in this paper to reveal influence of three main parameters on shear carrying capacity of stiffened steel plate shear wall. Three main parameters are as follows: slenderness ratio of panel lambda, stiffness ratio of stiffener to panel eta and column stiffness beta. From the numerical result obtained, some important conclusions can be drawn that steel plate shear wall with cross stiffeners has higher strength, and higher initial shear stiffness, compared with that of unstiffened thin SPSW, and that lambda and eta give rise to the qualitative change of shear-carrying capacity from thin panel to thick or moderate thick panel, while the parameter beta causes only the quantitative change. Two parameters lambda and eta can not be separated from each other in investigating theorectically the behavior of steel plate shear wall. The optimal value of stiffener stiffness eta is 30, which is effective and economic in the design of the SPSW. First yield criteria for shear stress beyond the elastic buckling load for the design of SPSW is proposed and the formulas that are used to estimate the shear carrying capacity of the panels with various lambda,eta and beta is then put forward.