Investigation of the effect of rigid connection type on the nonlinear behavior and over-strength factor of steel special moment frames

After poor performance and brittle fracture of moment connections in the 1994 earthquake in Northridge, researchers proposed new connections to improve the behavior of steel moment frames. Generally, these modified connections can be classified into two main categories: reduced beam section (RBS) and other than RBS connections such as bolted flange plate, bolted unstiffened and stiffened extended end-plate moment, and welded unreinforced flange-welded web moment connections. In this study the behavior of special steel moment frames using each of these two types of connections was investigated. For this purpose, several steel moment frames made up of these two types of connections were analyzed using Opensees software through nonlinear static procedure. For modeling, the behavior of connections was modeled using Bilin material. Then, using FEMAP696, the seismic parameters of all moment frames were determined and compared. Results indicated that the moment frames of RBS connections have higher seismic performance than the other moment frames. Furthermore, based on the numerical results, regardless of the connection type, it seems that 3 is not an appropriate value for the over-strength factor. Based on these numerical results, values equal to 4 and 5 can be proposed for the over-strength factor for moment frames of RBS and other than RBS connections respectively.