Numerical investigations of improved ductile steel moment connections

To eliminate brittle fracture at the beam-column joint in most special steel moment frames, the beam can act as a structural fuse during earthquakes with either reduced beam sections or reinforced connections. Although trimming the beam flanges away from the joints to weaken the beam is an economical approach, it affects the performance of beams and frames do not show acceptable behavior as considered. This necessitates developing new approaches to reduce these difficulties. In the current study, a new method is proposed to improve the reduced beam section frames behavior and reduce side effects of cutting beams flanges. The numerical studies results revealed that the proposed connection has preferable performance in comparison to normal reduced beam section connections under cyclic loading, and demonstrated the effectiveness of the improved connection details. The proposed connection was subjected to cyclic loads and showed appropriate ductile behavior with stable performance. This specimen successfully developed ductile behavior with no brittle fracture by forming the plastic hinge of the beam away from the joint.

کلیدواژه ها:

RBS moment connections ، Steel moment resisting frames ، Ductility ، Cyclic loading ، and Plastic design.