Lateral behaviour and failure modes of buckling-restrained beam-only-connected steel plate shear walls.

• A new type of SPSW structure is proposed. • The mechanical properties and failure modes of the specimens were analysed. • The design method of the shear capacity of buckling-restrained beam-only-connected SPSWs was proposed. In this paper, a new type of steel plate shear wall (SPSW) structure comprising square concrete-filled steel tube (CFST) boundary frame and infilled cold-formed steel (CFS) buckling-restrained beam-only-connected SPSWs is proposed. To study the lateral behaviour and failure modes of the buckling-restrained beam-only-connected SPSWs with square CFST frame, tests on a buckling-restrained beam-only-connected SPSW and a comparison specimen with unstiffened beam-only-connected SPSW with square CFST frame were conducted. The failure mode, hysteretic curve, shear capacity and energy dissipation capacity of the specimens under horizontal cyclic load were reported. The results showed that the two specimens had good lateral resistance and stiffness, which indicated that this structural system was a reliable SPSW structure. Besides, the arrangement of the CFS buckling-restraining strips could improve the seismic performance of beam-only-connected SPSWs. A total of 84 finite element (FE) models were developed and validated. Upon validation, the parametric analysis was carried out, and design method of the shear capacity of buckling-restrained beam-only-connected SPSWs was proposed. The results show that the newly developed design method is accurate and can better predict the yield capacity of CFS buckling-restrained beam-only-connected SPSWs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]