Investigation on Reduced Beam Section Moment Connections Under Cyclic Loading

The recent earthquakes have shown that steel moment frame (SMF) with weld connections are so brittle. According to studied, the great damages are due to cracking of the weld between the beam flange and the column face and inducing concentrated stresses in this area. A useful approach to reduce the stress concentration at the panel zone could be using of reduced beam section (RBS). Given the enormous impact of seismic behavior and ductility of the panel zone, RBS moves plastic hinge formation at an appropriate distance from column face. In this study, an ordinary rigid connection, reduce beam flange section and reduce beam web section have been modeled using ABAQUS computer program and compared with each other during cyclic behavior. The obtained result of this study showed that reduced beam flange section is more ductile and will dissipate energy more than other connections

Keywords:

Dissipated energy , Plastic hinge , RBS connections , Stiffness classification