Rotation capacity of steel members for the seismic assessment of steel buildings

Abstract

This paper focuses on the characterization of the rotation capacity of steel deep and shallow members made with European profiles subjected to cyclic flexural loading by considering several influencing parameters such as geometrical imperfections, material ductility, lateral unbraced length, and member length. For this purpose, an advanced finite element model, validated with past experimental data, was developed and an extensive parametric study was conducted. The numerical simulations revealed that shallow and deep members have different buckling behaviours and rotation capacity trends. Based on the numerical results and the experimental data collected from the literature, empirical equations are derived to quantify plastic rotation capacity limits. Compared with existing estimations, the proposed empirical equations show a more reasonable estimate. These rotation limits can be useful as modelling parameters for nonlinear static and response-history analysis and for the identification of the damage states in the context of Part 3 of Eurocode 8.