Test and Parametric Analysis on Performance Improvement of Non-buckling Corrugated Steel Shear Walls

In this paper, vertical boundary element with dog-bone weakened connections was introduced to the non-buckling corrugated steel shear wall, in order to improve its capacity of cumulative plastic deformation and avoid the undesirable and brittle failure mode due to the tearing of welds between vertical and horizontal boundary elements under cyclic forces. Small-scale specimens of non-buckling corrugated steel shear wall were tested to investigate fully the influence on the capacity of cumulative plastic deformation and failure mode. The test results indicated that shear walls with above-mentioned connections exhibited better capacity of cumulative plastic deformation, and corresponding failure mode was ductile. Meanwhile, finite element analysis using ABAQUS was also performed in order to figure out the reason of performance improvement, in terms of maximum Von-Mises stress and AC YIELD at the dog-bone weakened section. Moreover, steel frame with non-buckling corrugated steel shear walls was brought forward, in which the short beam between shear wall and column was shear strengthened in order to reduce the axial force of vertical boundary element by transferring the force to the nearby column, because the axial forces of boundary elements at the bottom storeys of the structure were excessively large due to the accumulation effect storey by storey. And parametric analysis in terms of the ratio between the width of non-buckling corrugated steel shear wall and column spacing, the ratio of axial stiffness between vertical boundary element and column, as well as the number of storeys, was conducted to investigate the influence on the maximum axial force of vertical boundary element and shear force of short beam. Finally, corresponding suggestions for practical design were made based on the results of parametric study.