A novel shear wall system for building structures has been developed that improves upon the performance of conventional steel plate shear walls by mitigating buckling. The new structural system, called the Ring Shaped - Steel Plate Shear Wall, was investigated and developed through experimental and computational methods. First, the plastic mechanism of the system was numerically derived and then analytically validated with finite element analyses. Next, five large-scale, quasi-static, cyclic experimental tests were conducted in the Thomas M. Murray Structures Laboratory at Virginia Tech. The large-scale experiments validated the system performance and provided data on the boundary frame forces, infill panel shear deformation modes, buckling mode shapes, and buckling magnitudes. Multiple computational modeling techniques were employed to reproduce different facets of the system behavior. First, detailed finite element models were constructed to accurately reproduce the cyclic performance, yielding pattern, and buckling mode shapes. The refined finite element models were utilized to further study the boundary element forces and ultra-low cycle fatigue behavior of the system. Second, reduced-order computational models were constructed that can accurately reproduce the hysteretic performance of the web plates. The reduced-order models were then utilized to study the nonlinear response history behavior of four prototype building structures using Ring Shaped - Steel Plate Shear Walls and conventional steel plate shear walls. The nonlinear response history analyses investigated the application of the system to a short period and a long period building configuration. In total 176 nonlinear response history analyses were conducted and statistically analyzed. Lastly, a practical design methodology for the Ring Shaped - Steel Plate Shear Wall web plates was presented. The experimental tests and computational simulations reported in this dissertation demonstrate that Ring Shaped - Steel Plate Shear Walls are capable of improving seismic performance of buildings by drastically reducing buckling and improving cyclic energy dissipation. / Ph. D.

The rapid growth of high-rise high-density urban areas in coastal and near coastal, hurricane-prone cities has been observed globally and in the United States in recent decades. Favored by modern urban growth and planning policies, this trend is expected to accelerate in future. Recent climate change studies suggest a significant increase in the destructiveness of hurricanes in past 30 years by both increases in lifetime and intensity of hurricanes. Current prescriptive wind design approach does not provide transparent methods and criteria to reliably quantify the performance of buildings as well as the functional requirements necessary to accommodate large populations during extreme wind. Since this approach primarily intends to keep the structural system essentially elastic, the more efficient design may be achievable by allowing controlled inelasticity in structural components. All these facts put a great emphasis on using a reliable wind design and assessment approach evidently describing the performance of high-rise building to wind loads beyond the current design wind loads. This dissertation presents the development of a wind performance-based engineering approach and its practical implementation for three, 47-, 40- and 30-story steel moment frame high-rise buildings. In this study, the nonlinear dynamic responses of the buildings to different wind hazard levels were evaluated by developing 3D nonlinear finite element models and utilizing a wind incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) approach. The wind loading for the 47-story building was measured by conducting wind pressure testing on a scaled rigid model at the Wall of Wind (WOW) facility at Florida International University. For two other buildings wind loads were acquired using TPU Aerodynamic Database. Using the IDA results and adopting available wind performance criteria, a wind performance assessment approach was developed representing the estimated performance levels as a function of the basic wind speed. Three types of wind performance were evaluated: structural component performance; cladding performance to wind-induced shear deformation; and serviceability motion comfort performance. This evaluation indicated remarkable lateral capacity associated with allowing controlled structural nonlinearity, in contrast to considerations required to assure acceptable serviceability and non-structural (e.g. cladding) performances.

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Nonlinear response history analysis is accepted as the most accurate analytical tool for seismic response determination. However, accurate estimation of displacement responses using conceptually simple, approximate analysis procedures is preferable, since there are shortcomings in the application of nonlinear response history analysis resulting from its complexity. An equivalent linearization procedure, which utilizes the familiar response spectrum analysis as the analysis tool and benefits from the capacity principles, is developed in this thesis study as an approximate method for predicting the inelastic seismic displacement response of MDOF systems under earthquake excitations. The procedure mainly consists of the construction of an equivalent linear system by reducing the stiffness of structural members which are expected to respond in the inelastic range. Different from similar studies in literature, equivalent damping is not explicitly employed in this study. Instead, predetermined spectral displacement demands are utilized in each mode of the equivalent linear system for the determination of global displacement demands. Response predictions of the equivalent linearization procedure are comparatively evaluated by using the benchmark nonlinear response history analysis results and other approximate methods including conventional pushover analysis and modal pushover analysis (MPA). It is observed that the proposed procedure results in similar accuracy with approximate methods which employ nonlinear analysis. Considering the conceptual simplicity of the procedure and the conventional analysis tools used in its application, presented equivalent linearization procedure can be suggested as a practically applicable method for the prediction of inelastic seismic displacement response parameters with sufficient accuracy.

Isolator displacements, floor accelerations, roof displacements, base shear and torsional moments are basic parameters that are considered in the design of seismically isolated structures. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effects of bidirectional earthquake excitations of near fault records on the response of base isolated structures in terms of basic parameters mentioned above. These parameters computed from nonlinear response history analysis (RHA) and they are compared with the parameters computed from equivalent lateral force procedure (ELF). Effect of asymmetry in superstructure is also examined considering mass eccentricity at each floor level. Torsional amplifications in isolator displacements, floor accelerations, roof displacements and base shear are compared for different level of eccentricities. Two buildings with different story heights are used in the analyses.The building systems are modeled in structural analysis program SAP2000. The scaling of ground motion data are taken from the study of &ldquo / Response of Isolated Structures Under Bi-directional Excitations of Near-fault ground Motions&rdquo / (Ozdemir, 2010). Each ground motion set (fault normal and fault parallel) are applied simultaneously for different range of effective damping of lead rubber bearing (LRB) and for different isolation periods.