Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Iranian Journal of Science and Technology, Transactions of Civil Engineering https://doi.org/10.1007/s40996-019-00246-2 RESEARCH PAPER Analysis of Coupled Steel Plate Shear Walls with Outrigger System for Tall Buildings Mohsenali Shayanfar 1  · Vahid Broujerdian 2  · Ali Ghamari 2 Received: 15 September 2018 / Accepted: 21 February 2019 © Shiraz University 2019 Abstract Steel plate shear wall (SPSW) had shown a good performance against lateral load in laboratories and last earthquakes. Despite its high shear stifness, its low bending stifness is the main concern about this system. Outriggers in conjunction with coupled SPSW that is investigated in this paper form an efective system with a high shear and bending stifness as well as great strength. To overcome determining the optimal location of outrigger in the system, equations governing the behavior of the proposed combined system are obtained. The results of the proposed equations are in good agreement with the results of the fnite element model. The fndings indicate that the location of an outrigger is much more important than its rigidity. Moreover, this study shows that column rigidity has a minor efect on controlling the lateral deformations. In addition, by increasing the rigidity of beams, the lateral drift of a building structure diminishes. Keywords Outrigger · Steel shear wall · Coupled wall · Drift · Stifness 1 Introduction Shear and bending stifness are two parameters to control of lateral drift in tall buildings. Although shear displace- ment is governed in short structures, bending displacement will govern in short structures. Since the performance of tall and short structures is diferent, diferent resisting systems have been presented for tall and short structures. Therefore, providing appropriate stifness and strength as well as the necessary yielding capacity is quite diferent for tall struc- tures compared to short structures. Normally, drift control will not be a problem in short buildings, and most often, the issue of control has to deal with the forces that govern the behavior of the structure. However, in tall buildings, the control of lateral displacements is one of the main (or important) design challenges. Diferent control methods for structures have been evaluated (Qu and Xu 2001), which are generally classifed as active, passive and semi-active control mechanisms. Utilizing shear wall is an appropriate method (structural system) to control shear displacement in tall buildings. Nevertheless, shear wall does not have a signif- cant efect on bending displacement of structure. So, control of bending displacement of tall building could be resisted by applying outrigger. Although valuable researches have been presented about concrete shear wall, adequate study has not been devoted to steel plate shear walls, especially coupled steel plate shear wall. Therefore, in this paper performance of coupled steel plate shear wall is investigated for utilization in tall buildings. If two coplanar shear walls are joined together by mem- bers (beams) through simple joints (which can only transfer axial forces), the moments applied to the walls are sepa- rately resisted by the internal moments of both walls. The amount of internal moments has a direct relationship to the bending stifness of the walls. Due to the internal moments, fexural stresses are linearly distributed along each wall, and the maximum tensile and compressive stresses appear at the two edges of each wall. Also, in case the walls are joined together by rigid beams, they form a double vertical cantilever and the applied moments are tolerated by both walls (which behave as an integrated system), by bending * Mohsenali Shayanfar shayanfar@iust.ac.ir Vahid Broujerdian broujerdian@iust.com Ali Ghamari aghamari@alumni.iust.ac.ir 1 Center of Excellence for Fundamental Studies in Structural Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran 2 Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran