Experimental study of hysteretic behavior of semi-rigid frame with a corrugated plate

Corrugated steel plate shear wall (CSPSW) is one of the new structural systems used to resist earthquakes and that has better a hysteretic behavior than a flat plate shear wall. In this paper, three full-scale, single-story, single-bay specimens, consisting of one semi-rigid frame without infill panels and two semi-rigid frames with unstiffened and stiffened doubly trapezoidal corrugated plates, were subjected to cyclic loading. The hysteretic behavior and energy dissipation capacity of the three specimens were compared. The experimental results revealed that the corrugated plate greatly enhanced the stiffness and lateral load-carrying capacity of the semi-rigid frames. Therefore, the frames with the corrugated plates had higher energy dissipation capacity than the frame without infill panels. Moreover, the strength, stiffness and energy dissipation capacity of the stiffened corrugated specimen were greater than those of the unstiffened corrugated specimen, although the ductility of the stiffened corrugated specimen was lower. A method of calculating the lateral capacity of CSPSWs was proposed based on the superposition principle. This method could accurately predict the lateral capacity of the corrugated specimens.