Seismic Upgrading of Non-ductile Steel Frames using Steel Plate Shear Walls

Abstract

Many old damaged and undamaged building structures do not meet the criteria of modern seismic design codes. Such structures need to be seismically enhanced. The main objective of this paper is to propose and validate the effectiveness of an upgrade scheme for non-seismic buildings using steel plate shear walls (SPSW). The upgrade is carried out considering a probability-based drift-based criterion, wherein incremental dynamic analysis is used for performance evaluation. The proposed upgrade procedure involves a static energy based scheme for the design of SPSW. It is tested on a 7- and a 5-story steel framed building structure. The results show substantial drift reduction overall, showing the effectiveness of the SPSW; however, selected target performance is not achieved exactly. Various reasons for the inability of the SPSW in meeting the probabilistic target are indicated. Overall, the proposed procedure is found to be effective for the upgrade of non-seismic steel frame structures to satisfy an inelastic drift-based probabilistic performance criterion. Need for future research works are indicated based on the shortcomings of the proposed procedure