Plastic analysis and performance-based design of coupled steel plate shear walls.

The coupled steel plate shear wall (C-SPSW) configuration consisting of two SPSWs linked by coupling beams at the floor levels, in addition to providing architectural flexibility, has been shown to exhibit superior seismic performance. While the shear strength of the infill panels due to tension field action is the primary source of lateral load resistance in a C-SPSW, the moment resisting actions of the boundary frames and the coupling beams connections provide substantial strength for the system. As such, in order to achieve material-efficient designs, rational procedures are needed to explicitly account for this strength, while maintaining the desirable performance for various hazard levels. Similar to planar SPSWs, the C-SPSW systems have been designed using the conventional force-based design approach, which typically requires several iterations to optimize the design for performance and efficiency. This research employs the principles of plastic analysis to quantify the contribution of the frame action to the overall strength of C-SPSWs and adopts the philosophy of the performance-based plastic design (PBPD) methodology to develop procedures for the efficient seismic design of such systems. To investigate the effectiveness of the proposed design procedure, 8- and 12-story case study C-SPSWs were designed, and their numerical models were analyzed using pushover and response history analyses. The seismic performance of the prototypes were evaluated using two suits of ground motions representing 10/50 and 2/50 hazard levels. The analysis results indicated that the C-SPSWs designed using the proposed approach successfully met the desired performance objectives for both seismic hazard levels considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]