Study on the Static Loading History of Steel Beam-to-Column Connections with Near-Fault Effects

Study on the Static Loading History of Steel Beam-to-Column Connections with Near-Fault Effects

Taiwan is located on a seismic belt with many faults. Around one third of Taiwan’s population lives within 10 kilometers of faults. This study aims to investigate the seismic performance of steel moment resisting frames with near-fault effects and to establish the loading history protocols of static tests with near-fault effects using nonlinear dynamic history analysis. In this study, two loading history protocols are proposed with a return period of 475 years and 2500 years for the design earthquake and the maximum considered earthquake, respectively. Using the results from Krawinkler and AISC 341-16, which considered near fault effects and farfield effects up to 4% rad, respectively, the results of four loading history protocols are compared. For the accumulated story drift angles of the loading history protocols, the three considering nearfault effects are smaller than that of AISC 341-16 with far-field effects ranging from 70% to 80%. The accumulated plastic story drift angle of the loading history protocol for a return period of 2500 years is larger than the other three. However, the largest story drift angles due to the pulse of near-faults for the two proposed loading history protocols are 6% and 6.5% rad, respectively, and are less than the 8% rad found for the loading history protocol from Krawinkler.