Shear resistance design of semi-supported buckling-restrained steel plate shear walls: Analytical and numerical investigation

Buckling-restrained steel plate shear wall (BRSPSW) rises as an excellent energy-dissipating lateral force-resisting component. Semi-supported BRSPSW is more flexible in structural config-uration than the conventional BRSPSW owing to its independent vertical boundary elements (VBEs). In this paper, the shear resistance and the VBEs effect of the semi-supported BRSPSW were studied by the analytical and numerical methods. A simplified model was developed for simulating the semi-supported BRSPSWs. A minimum sectional area of the VBEs, namely, Acr was suggested for the BRSPSW to fully develop its shear field. Meanwhile, the ultimate shear resis-tance formula of the semi-supported BRSPSW was proposed. Furthermore, a general finite element (FE) model of the BRSPSWs with two-sided, semi-supported, and four-sided connections was established and applied for parametric analyses. It was found that the semi-supported BRSPSW under the shear could be divided into one middle region with the shear field and two vertical edge regions with local stress fields. The edge regions acted as the additional VBEs for the middle region, whose span decreased with the rise in the sectional area of the VBEs, i.e, secondary columns. The hysteretic behavior of the BRSPSW could be improved by increasing the sectional area of the VBEs when the section area of the VBEs was smaller than Acr. The shear field could be utilized more efficiently in the semi-supported BRSPSW with a larger sectional area of the VBEs and a higher span-to-height ratio of the steel plate. Finally, the equations for predicting the ul-timate shear resistance and shear field distribution of the BRSPSW were verified by the test and FE results.