Catenary action in steel-framed buildings

Abstract

The current paper is of relevance to engineers engaged in the design of buildings in which severe column damage resulting from malicious actions is a design scenario. The tying force method as used for providing robustness to steel-framed buildings relies upon catenary action to redistribute loads following column damage. Fortunately severe column damage is extremely rare and for this reason it is not well understood if this load redistribution mechanism is reliable. The current paper presents results of an investigation into the tying force method by way of a case study of a steel-framed building in which support to a perimeter column is removed. Results indicate that industry standard beam–column connections possess insufficient ductility to accommodate the large floor displacements that occur during catenary action and the factor of safety against collapse is shown to be less than 0·2.