Study on Steel Plate Shear Wall (SPSW) with Cutout During Seismic Excitations

Steel plate shear wall (SPSW) is rapidly gaining popularity as a very effective lateral load resisting system in highly seismic areas. This system consists of steel infill plate surrounded by boundary beams and columns. Steel plate shear wall has high initial stiffness and very effective in reducing the lateral displacement of structures. In some situations existence of cutouts are unavoidable due to architectural reasons, structural reasons and/or installed heating and cooling systems on the walls. Cutouts in the steel infill plate leads to a decrease in lateral load resisting capacity and improper functioning of the systems and also results in an intense variation in stress distribution. In this paper, the effect of variation in cutout size and cutout shape in steel plate shear wall has been studied by performing time history analysis. The effect of these variables on displacement and stress distribution was analysed and discussed.