Experimental study of rigid beam-to-box column connections with types of internal/external stiffeners

Box sections are symmetrical sections and they have high moment of inertia in both directions, therefore they are good members in tall building structures. For the rigid connection in structures with box column continuity plates are used on level of beam flanges in column. Assembly of the continuity plates is a difficult and unreliable work due to lack of weld or high welding and cutting in the fourth side of column in panel zone, so the use of experimental stiffeners have been considered by researchers. This paper presented an experimental investigation on connection in box columns. The proposed connection has been investigated in four cases which contain connection without internal and external stiffeners(C-0-00), connection with continuity plates(C-I-CP), connection with external vase shape stiffener (C-E-VP) and connection with surrounding plates(C-E-SP). The results show that the connections with vase plates and surrounding plates can respectively increase the ultimate strength of the connection up to 366% and 518% than the connection without stiffeners, in case connection with the continuity plates this parameter increases about 39%. In addition, the proposed C-E-VP and C-E-SP connection provide a rigid and safe connection to acquire rigidity of 95% and 98% respectively. But C-I-CP connection is classified as semi-rigid connections.