LAUSR

Abstract Regarding high ductility and potential of steel plate shear walls in energy absorption, they are required to be very thin in thickness especially in upper floors of the building in order to resist lateral loads and sometimes it will reach to a fraction of millimeter in calculations. Since preparation of such thin steel plates is not simply possible, a thicker plate with an opening can be used to reduce stiffness. On the other hand, the existence of opening is inevitable due to architectural considerations such as lighting. In the present paper, shear strength of steel plate shear wall with openings in different zones has been studied by finite element method. As a result, an empirical simple dimensionless equation has been presented to estimate accurately the amount of decrease of shear strength of the wall with an arbitrary opening position in any zone of the plate. To validate the accuracy of suggested relation, numerous finite element models have been simulated with different geometric properties such as shape, diameter, location of opening, thickness and span to height ratio of plate. Comparing results with that of suggested relation and corresponding values of theoretic relations shows the accuracy of the proposed relation for applying in a wide range of steel plate shear walls with different geometric specifications.