Numerical study of steel plate shear walls with diverse construction configurations

Extensive numerical research on steel plate shear walls (SPSWs) has been conducted for decades to facilitate their engineering applications. However, these studies usually adopted built-in constitutive models in commercial finite element (FE) packages and focused on SPSWs with a particular type of construction configuration, thus yielding unsatisfactory accuracy and inadequate validation. In addition, the effect of axial forces on the frame columns, which commonly exist in practice, has rarely been investigated. In this paper, a sophisticated constitutive model for structural steel is introduced and further improved by incorporating the Bao and Wierzbicki ductile damage criterion to consider strength degradation under large deformations. Then, 12 SPSW specimens with diverse construction configurations are simulated with the developed model to fully validate its effectiveness. Compared with built-in models in commercial FE software, the developed model is more accurate and can describe complicated deformation patterns under various circumstances, including extreme loading cases. On these bases, a thorough parametric analysis of 35 specimens – combining 5 construction configurations with 7 axial force ratios – is performed to quantitatively investigate the effect of axial forces applied on the frame columns. The results indicate that the axial forces can counteract the tensile forces from the tension fields; but meanwhile can also aggravate the compressive burden of the compression-side column, which induces column yielding or buckling. When the axial force ratio increases, the adverse effect gradually prevails over the beneficial effect and notably decreases the loading capacities. Accordingly, a limit axial force ratio of 0.5 and a simple linear reduction factor when calculating the ultimate loading capacity under axial forces are suggested in engineering design.