Investigation of nonlinear behavior of Staggered Truss System

Staggered truss system is one of the types of lateral bracing systems in steel structures. In this system, lateral forces are transmitted through the rigid floor diaphragm between adjacent trusses. The columns of the staggered truss system are placed only in the outer walls and the middle columns are removed. Hence, a large open space without columns is achievable, which is architecturally appropriate. In this paper, the effect of geometric characteristics of staggered truss systems such as the ratio of the opening length, the type and arrangement of the side trusses in seismic performance is investigated using ETABS software. For this purpose, the ability of the analytical model was first validated to estimate the available experimental results. It was observed that the analytical result is in good agreement with the results of the Experimental model. Then, by examining several different models, the effect of the length of the middle opening was investigated on the seismic parameters of the Staggered truss system. The results showed that the ratio of the length of the middle opening is very important in seismic performance; So that this ratio can have a direct effect on the ductility and stiffness of the structure. Finally, the effect of truss type used in side openings was evaluated on the best span ratio based on the best level of seismic performance. In this paper, three types of structures are used: short, medium and high.