Seismic Design of Special Plate Shear Walls using orthotropic membrane model

Steel plate shear wall (SPW) is one of the newest lateral load resisting systems for buildings in seismic area. This system has been used in designing of the steel buildings since last 3 decades. SPW consists of vertical steel plates (web) connected to the surrounding beams (HBE) andcolumns (VBE). Up to now, several methods, such as strip model, have been proposed to predict the behavior of this system. Due to lack of a comprehensive method for complete design processes, this system has not been significantly utilized by engineers. One of the newest techniques which was approved by AISC and mentioned in AISC Steel Design Guide 20, is orthotropic membrane model. This method has some advantages as compared to the stripmodel. This paper discusses about the special type of SPW named special plate shear wall (SPSW) and applies the process of this recent technique for designing building utilizing SPSW in a zone of high seismicity. An orthotropic membrane model is developed by ETABS to correctly distribute forces between the wall members at each story. Tension field angle is calculated after specifying web plates and boundary elements characteristics of SPSW. This angle affects the member forces and web plates shear strength.

Keywords:

Steel plate shear wall , web plate , orthotropic membrane model , tension field action