Study of a new type of steel slit shear wall with introduced out-of-plane folding

The steel slit shear wall (SSSW), made by cutting vertical slits in a steel plate, is increasingly used for the seismic protection of building structures. In the domain of thin plate shear walls, the out-of-plane buckling together with the potential fracture developed at slit ends at large lateral deformation may result in degraded shear strength and energy dissipation, which is not desirable in view of seismic design. To address this issue, the present study proposed a new type of SSSW made by intentionally introducing initial out-of-plane folding into the originally flat slitted plate. Quasi-static cyclic tests on three SSSWs with different amplitudes of introduced out-of-plane folding were conducted to study their shear strength, elastic stiffness, energy dissipation capacity and buckling behavior. By introducing proper amplitude of out-of-plane folding into the SSSW fracture at slit ends was eliminated, plumper hysteretic behavior was obtained and there was nearly no strength degradation. A method to estimate the shear strength and elastic stiffness of the new SSSW was also proposed.