| An analytical study using the finite element program ABAQUS/Standard was performed to investigate the behavior of unstiffened thin steel plate shear walls (SPSW) having openings on the infill plate under monotonic pushover displacement. To accommodate the passage of utilities, two designs proposed by Vian (2005), namely the perforated infill plate and the cutout corner SPSW, are revisited to investigate and resolve some concerns reported by Vian (2005).; As a sub-element that drives the behavior of the perforated infill plate of the type considered by Vian (2005), a series of individual perforated strips 2000 mm by 400 mm with 4 perforations along the strip length and perforation diameters D from 10 mm to 300 mm are first analyzed to develop a fundamental understanding of the behavior of complete perforated SPSW. It is found that the results from the individual perforated strip analysis can accurately predict the behavior of complete perforated SPSW provided the holes diameter is less than 60% of the strip width (D/Sdiag ≤ 0.6). It is found that no interaction exists between adjacent strips that could affect the stress distribution within an individual strip, i.e., each strip in a SPSW behaves as an independent strip. Shear strength of the infill plate in a perforated SPSW having multiple circular perforations regularly spaced throughout the infill plate can be calculated by reducing the panel shear strength in a solid panel SPSW by a factor (1- alpha · D/S diag), where a is a proposed correction factor equal to 0.70. |
