The idea of using steel plate shear wall as a lateral load resisting system in design and retrofit of structures has attracted the attention of researchers and designers for more than three decades. In this research, the ductility of thin steel plate shear walls are studied based on ATC-24 protocol and Popov’s definition. Two three-story unstiffened steel plate shear walls were tested under cyclic loading. In these tests shear walls had rigid and simple beamto-column connections. For the plate of panels, low strength steel and for the boundary frame high strength steel were used. In addition, some other valid tests on steel plate shear walls with different configurations, which were done in the world also, were considered. The results obtained from all of the tests show that the ductility factor in thin steel plate shear walls according to ATC-24 protocol and Popov's definitions can be assumed about 6.5 and 13, respectively.

Steel plate shear walls have been noticed in recently three decades to considering lateral loads of earthquake and wind, in high rise buildings behavior of this system resembles a steel plate girder used in a vertical cantilever application. The columns fulfill the function of the flanges of the vertical girder, while the horizontal floor beams act as web stiffeners. Before acceptance of the idea to utilizing post-buckling strength of infill steel plate, stiffened walls with heavy stiffeners were used to preventing infill steel plate buckling but after acceptance of this idea, unstiffened walls replaced with stiffened walls. However in seismic rehabilitation of existing buildings and retrofitting the structures, which are more in attention recently or in place which wall has an opening using stiffeners has a high importance. In this research influence of X, K, V, inverse V and V-H shapes of the stiffeners on steel plate shear walls have been studied. Results of finite element analysis show that X shape stiffener in compare with other diagonal stiffeners including K, inverse V and V shape especially V-H shape stiffener, have more effective influence in increasing yield and ultimate loads and energy absorption capacity of panel. Also unlike plate girders which for doing economic design stiffener is used in steel plat shear wall systems, it is better using unstiffened panel.

In recent years steel plate shear walls are widely used in tall building construction especially in Japan and United states. Excellent seismic performance and saving the construction cost are the important reasons of using these systems. Two types of steel plate shear walls that conveniently used are stiffened and unstiffened types. Stiffened types are very costly and unstiffened types have some serviceability problems after earthquake event. An innovated type of steel shear wall which made up of corrugated steel plates is introduced. The structural Behavior of corrugated steel shear wall systems with its boundary columns and beams in each story is more or less similar to steel plate girders with corrugated webs and might remove most of stiffened and unstiffened steel shear wall` deficiencies. Reduced wall stiffness due to accordion effect, achieving a stiffened steel plate shear wall with relatively thin plates and mobilizing the inherent geometric stiffness of plate, ease of erection, good seismic performance and energy dissipation and visual esthetics in expose construction are main advantages of these structural systems. The behavior is investigated by FEM method. Theses analyses are geometrically and materially nonlinear and the relation between corrugated plate dimensions and its seismic performance are discussed.

The present paper describes the analysis of high-rise steel buildings frames with Steel plate shear walls (SPSWs) by using SAP- 2000 FEA programme. The primary variable in the analysis were presence of steel plate shear walls, thickness of plate (5 mm to 10 mm) and aspect ratio (0.833 to 1.667 width-to-height ratio). From the results obtained it is observed that, with the use of steel shear walls in the buildings, the bending moments in the beams are observed to reduce. The increase of shear wall thickness has a little effect on the bending moments and shear forces of the beams and there is small decrease in the lateral deflections. The storey drift increases with increase of aspect ratio while bending moment and shear force show a considerable increase.

The steel shear wall and composite steel plate shear wall is introduced in recent three decade and is considered and is spread rapidly. Composite steel plate shear wall which is made of a layer of thin steel sheet with coating of reinforced concrete in one or both sides of steel palate is considered a third generation of resistance shear walls against lateral loads that in addition to increasing the strength, ductility and energy absorption, it is very economical and affordable and it is used in constructing high buildings, retrofitting buildings and tanks. In this paper we have tried to examine the seismic behavior of steel and composite shear walls. For this purpose several models of steel shear and composite walls from one to five stories were constructed and analyzed by Abaqus software. The result show that composite steel plate shear walls has more ability to absorb energy, spread produced stress to different parts of the steel plate and ductile than steel shear walls. The curve hysteresis loop of composite steel palate shear walls is more stable and sustainable than steel shear wall. With increasing the number of stories, the initial strength and stiffness is decreased due to increase in lateral shift but the amount of absorbing energy and ductility is increased. The force tolerance in composite steel plate shear wall models is increased in comparison with steel shear walls.

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, where in 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.