Performance Based Design Tools for Steel Plate Shear Walls

Advances in steel plate shear wall technology and design continue to be made in the U.S. and around the world. These advances are helping to make the system more effective and efficient; however, little attention has been paid to developing tools for performance based design. The ATC-58 project is developing next-generation seismic design procedures that will enable engineers to more reliably predict and design for performance. A key part of ATC-58's success will be the availability of consistent and rational damage states and corresponding fragility data for the broad range of seismic load resisting systems available. This paper describes the development of proposed damage states and repair states for steel plate shear walls. Relative to more commonly studied seismic load resisting systems, such as steel moment resisting frames, there is significantly less data available for steel plates shear walls. However, this study has resulted in the development of a database of relevant data and will guide observations made during steel plate shear wall tests in the future, ensuring that data necessary for fragility curve development are collected. This project is part of a NEESR Small Group project supported by NSF grant CMMI: 0830294.