Civil Engineering Association

This report presents information on performance of steel shear walls under seismic effects and their seismic design. Steel shear walls discussed in this report are used to provide lateral strength and stiffness to steel building structures. They have also been used efficiently in seismic retrofit of existing steel or reinforced concrete buildings. Since 1970’s structural engineers have used the steel shear walls as lateral load resisting system for new high-rises in highly seismic regions such as California and Japan. This report is prepared to provide the state of the art of the seismic behavior as well as seismic design of steel shear walls. First, some of the important structures in which steel shear walls have been used, are introduced. Then, a summary of the behavior of steel shear walls under cyclic load, in the laboratory as well as during past earthquakes, is presented. Later in the report, current code provisions relevant to steel shear walls are presented and new R-Factor and other design parameters are proposed for steel shear walls. The report also includes a chapter on seismic design of steel shear walls. The design procedures if applied can result in more ductile, economical and better seismic performance. Finally, a number of economical and efficient steel shear wall systems and their details are suggested.
The first edition of this report, which was printed on paper, was released in February 2001. The differences between this electronic edition for the web and the first printed edition are: (a) the results of an additional test of steel shear walls conducted at UC-Berkeley are added to Section 3.5, (b) the equations adapted from the AISC-LRFD Specification are written in the same format as in the just released 1999 AISC-LRFD Specification, © any typographical error caught after the first printed version have been corrected in this electronic version and; (d) a page “about the author” has been added to the end of the report.