ABSTRACT
The steel plate shear wall (SPSW) system is widely recognized as an effective lateral resisting system that provides a stable and large strength (CSA, 2001; AISC, 2005). These beneficial characteristics are attributed to the tension field formed in the plate where the plate’s ends are connected both to the beams and columns of the building frame (Caccese, 1993; Driver, 1998). The topic of this paper is a steel plate wall which is adapted only in a segment of beam spans of low to mid-rise buildings with many window and/or door openings. Figure 1 shows an example application of the proposed system. The wall is relatively wide, e.g. 1 to 2 m; thickness of the plate is 3 to 6 mm. Unlike the steel shear plate dampers developed by Nakashima (1994), the proposed system employs thin (e.g. widthto-thickness ratio of 400) plates of normal steel.
