An innovative structural steel lateral load building system is gaining recognition and subsequent application in low and high-rise developments across North America. Known as Steel Plate Shear Walls, the building system offers low cost fabrication, speed of erection and superior anticipated performance, in particular, to earthquake excitation. Its performance is heavily reliant on the post-buckling strength of thin steel in-fill panels coupled with a co-planar integral moment resisting frame. The behaviour emulates the tension field development within web panels of bridge plate girders that are anchored by the surrounding stiff boundary elements. Most notable characteristics are the robust and stable hysteretic performance and the nearly perfectly elastic, perfectly plastic response resulting in a highly redundant, and most superior, energy absorbing lateral framing system. Following extensive analytical and experimental investigation, design rules have finally been adopted and are being instituted into Canada's next edition of its steel structures design standard. This succeeds design validation studies including cost verification against traditional ductile reinforced concrete framing. Further innovation with the system's integration into structural form is being applied to significant new projects along the West Coast of the United States. Interest, as well as actual application, for seismic rehabilitation projects indicate strong potential for this market as well. The paper will encompass the system's history, that is, design analogy, experimentation, design verification, cost analysis, building rehabilitation potential and finally actual project application studies. There is a great future for the building industry with Steel Plate Shear Wall construction as endorsed by the Canadian steel code.
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