Collapse Modes of Steel Ordinary Concentrically Braced Frames According to Unbalanced Forces

Abstract

The KBC2009 first introduces the requirements about vertical unbalanced forces into the design for steel ordinary concentrically braced frames(steel OCBFs), which forces them to easily meet the target seismic performance, called as the life safety performance objective under design based earthquakes(DBEs) pursuing in the KBC2009. However, there is little information on the effects of vertical unbalanced forces to the collapse prevention performance objective under maximum considered earthquakes(MCEs) which is another target seismic performance level implicitly prescribed in ASCE 7-10. It is valuable that the collapse capacities of steel OCBFs designed according to the KBC2009 are investigated. In this paper, the collapse modes of inverted V shaped steel OCBFs excited by MCEs are investigated. The prototype buildings of 5 story steel OCBFs are designed with different site conditions and three types of unbalanced forces are considered in the design stages. The prototype buildings are evaluated their seismic performances and collapse modes by nonlinear static analyses and nonlinear dynamic analyses. Analysis results show that the unbalanced forces significantly affect the seismic performance of the prototype buildings and proper considerations of unbalanced forces are required to achieve the desirable collapse mode and the collapse prevention performance objective.