Large-Scale Seismic Testing of Knee-Brace-Frame
Publication: Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 123, Issue 1
Abstract
In a knee-brace-frame (KBF), one end of the brace is connected to a short knee element instead of beam-column joint. The brace provides the required lateral stiffness, whereas the ductility is obtained through shear yielding of the knee element. Large-scale dynamic testing of a KBF with shear yielding knee is described in this paper. When a two-story KBF with rolled I-sections as knee members was subjected to base excitation through pseudo-dynamic testing, inducing a shear strain of 0.1, it was found that the KBF could dissipate a large amount of energy without any pinching in the hysteretic loops or significant deterioration in strength and stiffness provided that the knees are designed to inhibit local and lateral-torsional buckling. The test results reveal that the variation of shear stress with the shear strain in the knee could be approximated by a bilinear hysteretic curve with a strain hardening slope of 0.02–0.04. The out-of-plane displacements at the knee-brace joints and vertical displacements at the knee-beam joints are found to be small.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 123 • Issue 1 • January 1997
Pages: 11 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Published online: Jan 1, 1997
Published in print: Jan 1997
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