08-10-2014, 04:38 PM
Beam-to-column connections are steel MRFs have a major responsibility of transferring the loads safely between the beams and columns without compromising on the ductility of the frame. Experiences from the past earthquakes have shown that frames designed to remain ductile had failed in a brittle manner owing to brittle fractures of the welds at the connections. Further, a majority of the connections damaged, had been designed in accordance with the classical Bernoulli beam theory, which assumes that the flanges primarily carry bending and shear force is transferred through the web. The recent studies have shown that this is not valid in the neighborhood of the beam-column junctions, where the beam webs at the column flange are devoid of stresses. In the present experimental study, four sub-assemblages of the exterior joint are studied under reverse cycle loading under displacement control in the postelastic regime. The specimens are representative of both strong-column/weakbeam and weak-beam/strong-column design conditions. The connection details have been designed usin