Block Shear Rotational Stiffness Effects on Coped Steel Beams Welded Connection Failure

One of the most important failure modes over coped steel beams by means of double clip angle connection detail is block shear of the beam’s web. Experimental studies shown, in this failure mode connections' rotational stiffness has been significantly effected on block shear capacity of welded connections. On the other hand, the current steel design codes in their specification do not incorporate the effects of the rotational stiffness on the connection strength. Whereas, considering a bit of rotational stiffness effect in coped steel beams connection behavior, has been helped designers non-conservatively estimate the block shear capacity in their calculation and design.In this paper, based on the previous experimental studies, a strength finite element model was established. By using the finite element approaches, analytically evaluated the block shear rotational stiffness behavior on coped beams with welded connection.The results of the finite element analyzes, were comperd with experimental studies.