Experimental investigations on steel plate shear walls using box columns with or without infill concrete

Steel plate shear wall (SPSW) is a kind of lateral force resisting system. Unstiffened infill plates are connected to the boundary beams and columns at the all sides of the plates. By allowing the infill panels buckle in shear and develop the tension field action, an SPSW can effectively resist the lateral forces by the tension field action. If the boundary columns in an SPSW are bare or concrete filled steel box columns, the inner column flanges connected to the panels would suffer notable pull-out panel forces. In addition, these boundary columns must resist the axial forces and the moments induced from the sway actions of the SPSW. This study investigates the capacity design methods for the inner flanges of the box columns with or without the infill concrete to prevent the major yielding of the inner flange. Cyclic tests of three full-scale two-story SPSWs using box columns with or without the infill concrete were conducted. Test results show that minor yielding of the inner column flange would not adversely affect the seismic performance of the SPSW while the major yielding in the inner column flange would cause a significant permanent deformation in the flange.