Dapeng Town Industrial Park, Tongshan District, Xuzhou City, Jiangsu Province, China
In recent years, frequent seismic disasters have highlighted the limitations of traditional steel structures, which often suffer from significant residual deformations and are difficult to repair post-earthquake. Self-centering structures, which achieve minimal damage during earthquakes and require little to no repair, have thus garnered significant attention from scholars worldwide. A novel efficiently assembled self-centering steel frame system, based on prestressing technology and bolted connections, has been proposed. This system achieves the goal of efficient assembly without high-altitude tensioning and with shorter construction periods, while maintaining functionalities similar to traditional self-centering steel structures. Based on this, the efficiently assembled steel frame-slit steel plate shear wall structure was proposed and its quasi-static experimental research was conducted. This structure mainly consists of an efficiently assembled steel frame and slit steel plate shear walls, connected using high-strength bolts for efficient assembly. The efficiently assembled steel frame is composed of steel columns and prestressed steel beams, which are connected using steel tendons and high-strength bolts.
Numerical simulations of the efficiently assembled steel frame-slit steel plate shear wall structure were performed using ABAQUS finite element software. The main components of the efficiently assembled steel frame structure, including steel columns, prestressed steel beams, and steel plate shear walls, were modeled using C3D8R eight-node hexahedral linear elements. Prestressed steel tendons were modeled using T3D3 three-node truss elements. The simulation considered geometric and material nonlinearities and employed a displacement loading protocol consistent with the experimental tests. Both the experimental and numerical simulations concluded when the inter-story drift angle of the structure reached the elastic-plastic limit of 1/50.
The numerical simulation results were compared with the experimental results to verify the reliability of the finite element analysis method. Additionally, the performance of the efficiently assembled steel frame-slit steel plate shear wall structure was compared to that of an efficiently assembled steel frame without slit steel plate shear walls. This comparison analyzed their hysteresis curves, energy dissipation performance, stiffness, self-centering capability, and equivalent plastic strain, further investigating the seismic performance of the efficiently assembled steel frame-slit steel plate shear wall structure and the role of slit steel plate shear walls.
The results indicated that the numerical simulation closely matched the experimental results in terms of hysteresis curves and frame opening widths, effectively simulating the joint opening and closing mechanism. The efficiently assembled steel frame-slit steel plate shear wall structure demonstrated a good joint opening and closing mechanism and self-centering capability, high initial stiffness, good energy dissipation capacity, and high lateral load-bearing capacity. The structure exhibited minimal residual openings, and the maximum tendon force during testing was much less than the yielding force of the steel tendons. Except for slight plasticity at the column bases, the overall frame remained largely elastic, providing a good foundation for withstanding larger seismic forces. Comparative analysis of the numerical simulation results of the efficiently assembled steel frame-slit steel plate shear wall structure and the efficiently assembled steel frame without slit steel plate shear walls showed that the slit steel plate shear walls effectively enhanced the structure’s stiffness and energy dissipation capacity. The slit steel plate shear walls’ buckling and energy dissipation mechanisms protected the main frame structure, enabling quick restoration of the main structure’s functionality post-earthquake through the replacement of the slit steel plate shear walls.
