Study on non-buckling steel plate shear walls with corrugated core panel

In this paper, a non-buckling steel plate shear wall with corrugated core panel was introduced, which keeps itself from premature buckling by fully taking advantage of extra-large flexural stiffness of corrugated core panel and enables to yield before buckling. Most importantly, the optimal corrugation configuration of corrugated core panel was obtained by parametric investigation into detailed dimensions of single wave such as thickness, depth of corrugation, angle of corrugation and so on, which was hereafter validated by numerical simulation. Non-dimensional parameters such as height-to-thickness ratio, width-to-thickness ratio and aspect ratio have also been taken into consideration, all of which turn out to be the most decisive factors of guaranteeing the “non-buckling”. The parametric analysis proves that as long as the former two factors are below the critical values recommended in this paper, unexpected buckling is not going to happen. On the other hand, theoretical approaches to calculate the yielding strength and initial stiffness were derived, as well as a theoretical design method for boundary elements. Meanwhile, a simplified model was concluded. Formulas to determine the cross-section of cross braces and boundary elements were given based on the principle of equivalent yielding strength and initial stiffness. Finally, four specimens were resorted to testify above theory and parametric study. Two specimens with larger height-to-thickness ratio that exceeds the recommended limit exhibit inevitable buckling, while the others with smaller height-to-thickness ratio show ideal energy-absorbing capability and no evident buckling is observed even under an inter-story drift of 2%.