Prediction of Column Axial Force in X-braced Seismic Steel Frames Considering Brace Buckling

Abstract

According to the capacity design concept underlying current steel seimsic provisions, the braces in concentrically braced frames should dissipate seismic energy through cyclic tension yielding and compression buckling. On the other hand, the beams and the columns in the braced bay should remain elastic for gravity load actions and additional column axial forces resulting from the brace buckling and yielding. However, due to the difficulty in accumulating the yielding and buckling-induced column forces from different stories, empirical and often conservative approaches have been used in design practice. Recently a totally different approach was proposed by Cho, Lee, and Kim (2011) for the prediction of column axial forces in inverted V-braced frames by explicitly considering brace buckling. The idea proposed in their study is extended to X-braced seismic frames which have structural member configurations and load transfer mechanism different from those of inverted V-braced frames. Especially, a more efficient rule is proposed in combining multi-mode effects on the column axial forces by using the modal-mass based weighting factor. The four methods proposed in this study are evaluated based on extensive inelastic dynamic analysis results.