Impact of diverse seismic hazard estimates on design and performance of Steel Plate Shear Walls buildings in Dubai, UAE

The Steel Plate Shear Walls (SPSW) system is one of many Lateral Force Resisting Systems (LFRS) added to the design codes over recent years. It comprises an array of steel plates or walls (referred to as the Web) that are welded into a steel beams and columns frame (Horizontal and Vertical Boundary Elements, HBE and VBE). When subjected to lateral forces, these web plates buckle diagonally and develop a tension field along the opposite diagonal. Under substantial earthquake loads, these plates are allowed to yield along the tension diagonal which provides the necessary energy dissipation during seismic activity. The city of Dubai, UAE has become an international and regional business hub featuring hundreds of tall building structures. The degree of seismic risk that Dubai faces is yet to be agreed upon amongst researchers and structural engineering practitioners. This paper presents the design and analysis of a standard 20-story steel structure employing SPSW to be built in Dubai, UAE subjected to three varying levels of seismic activity reported by researchers. The structural performance of the varying designs is quantified via nonlinear monotonic pushover analyses in the OpenSees platform.