Seismic Performance of Perforated Steel Plate Shear Walls Designed According to Canadian Seismic Provisions

Perforated Steel Plate Shear Wall (P-SPSW) is a relatively new lateral load resisting system. Research on P-SPSW is in the initial stage, and to the best of these researchers’ knowledge, no seismic performance of code designed P-SPSWs has been studied yet. The main objective of this study is to evaluate the seismic performance of code designed P-SPSWs. Three multi-storeys (4-,

8-, and 12-storey) P-SPSWs were designed according to the seismic provisions of NBCC 2010 and CAN/CSA S16-14. Nonlinear time history (NTH) analysis was conducted using detailed finite element (FE) modeling techniques for a series of ground motion records which were compatible with Vancouver response spectrum. All the perforated shear walls exhibited excellent seismic behavior including high stiffness, stable ductility, good energy dissipation capability and also current code equation provides a good estimation of the shear strength of the perforated plate when the infill plate is fully yielded. The applicability of the modified strip model (MSM) was also evaluated in this research for unstiffened P-SPSW. It was observed that the modified strip model captures the inelastic behavior of multi-storey unstiffened P-SPSWs with adequate accuracy. The ultimate strength was predicted well, and the initial stiffness was slightly underestimated.