• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.61-71
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• 2010

Five half-scale beam-to-column connections in a precast concrete frame were tested with cyclic loading that simulated earthquake-type motions. Five half -scale interior beam-column assemblies representing a portion of a frame subjected to simulated seismic loading were tested, including one monolithic specimen and four precast specimens. Variables included the detailing used at the joint to achieve a structural continuity of the beam reinforcement, and the type of special reinforcement in the connection (whether ECC or transverse reinforcement). The specimen design followed the strong-column-weak-beam concept. The beam reinforcement was purposely designed and detailed to develop plastic hinges at the beam and to impose large inelastic shear force demands into the joint. The joint performance was evaluated on the basis of connection strength, stiffness, energy dissipation, and drift capacity. From the test results, the plastic hinges at the beam controlled the specimen failure. In general, the performance of the beam-to-column connections was satisfactory. The joint strength was 1.15 times of that expected for monolithic reinforced concrete construction. The specimen behavior was ductile due to tensile deformability by ECC and the yielding steel plate, while the strength was nearly constant up to a drift of 3.5 percent.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.73 no.6
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• pp.613-620
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• 2020

The research study is focuses on a form of all-bolted joint with the external ring stiffening plate in the prefabricated steel structure. The components are bolted at site after being fabricated in the factory. Six specimens were tested under cyclic loading, and the effects of column axial compression ratio, concrete-filled column, beam flange sub plate, beam web angle cleats, and spliced column on the failure mode, hysteretic behavior and ductility of the joints were analyzed. The results shown that the proposed all-bolted joint with external ring stiffening plate performed high bearing capability, stable inflexibility degradation, high ductility and plump hysteretic curve. The primary failure modes were bucking at beam end, cracking at the variable section of the external ring stiffening plate, and finally welds fracturing between external ring stiffening plate and column wall. The bearing capability of the joints reduced with the axial compression ratio increased. The use of concrete-filled steel tube column can increase the bearing capability of joints. The existence of the beam flange sub plate, and beam web angle cleat improves the energy dissipation, ductility, bearing capacity and original rigidity of the joint, but also increase the stress concentration at the variable section of the external reinforcing ring plate. The proposed joints with spliced column also performed desirable integrity, large bearing capacity, initial stiffness and energy dissipation capacity for engineering application by reasonable design.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.237-250
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• 2017

There has been increasing attention in many countries on seismic retrofit of old fashioned RC structures in recent years. In such buildings, the joints lack transverse reinforcement and suffer inadequate seismic dimensional requirements and the reinforcement is plain bar. The behavior of the joints is governed by sliding of steel bars and diagonal shear failure is less influential. Different methods to retrofit beam-column joints have been proposed in the literature such as wrapping the joint by FRP sheets, enlargement of the beam-column joint, and strengthening the joint by steel sheets. In this study, an enlargement technique that uses external prestressed cross ties with steel angles is examined. The technique has already been used for substructures reinforced by deformed bars and has advantages such as efficient enhancement of seismic capacity and lack of damage to the joint. Three reference specimens and two retrofitted units are tested under increasing lateral cyclic load in combination with two levels of axial load. The reference specimens showed relatively low shear strength of 0.150${\surd}$($f_c$) and 0.30${\surd}$($f_c$) for the exterior and interior joints, respectively. In addition, relatively brittle behavior was observed and large deformations extended into the panel zone of the joints. The retrofit method has increased ductility ratio of the interior beam-column joints by 63%, and energy dissipation capacity by 77%, relative to the control specimen; For external joints, these values were 11%, and 94%. The retrofit method has successfully relocated the plastic joints far from the column face. The retrofit method has improved shear strength of the joints by less than 10%.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.83-97
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• 2011

In this study, the seismic details of a concrete-encased, U-shaped steel beam-to-RC column connection were developed. Three specimens of the beam-to-column connection were tested under cyclic loading to evaluate the seismic performance of the connection. The test parameters were the beam depth and the column section shape. The depths of the composite beams were 610 and 710 mm, including the slab depth. For the RC columns, a square section and a circular section were used. Special details using diagonal re-bars and exterior diaphragm plates were used to strengthen the connections with the rectangular and circular columns, respectively. The test results showed that the specimens exhibited good strength, deformation, and energy dissipation capacities. The deformation capacity exceeded 4% interstory drift angle, which is the requirement for the Special Moment Frame.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.17 no.4 s.77
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• pp.459-467
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• 2005

This study focuses on the development of a new method of H-shaped beam-to-square column connection with an outer diaphragm and a field welding. The specific type of beam-to-column connection with an external stiffener, using field welding, is proposed. The structural behavior of this connection was examined experimentally. Two loading type tests were conducted under the experimental parameters given as details. First described was the symmetrical loading test, which supported both ends or a beam simply and applied a load from the column to the pend (What does this mean?) to investigate a fundamental characteristic of this connection. Further described was the anti-symmetrical loading test, which carried out simple support of the column'stop end and the column base, and applied a load from both ends of a beam to investigate the structural performance of this connection. From the results, it is clear that the external- stiffener-type connection proposed in this paper is the reliable connection method.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.717-734
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• 2018

This paper presents the flexural performance of steel beam-to-column joints composed of hollow structural section beams and columns. A finite element (FE) model was developed incorporating geometrical and material nonlinearities to evaluate the behaviour of joints subjected to bending moments. The numerical outcomes were validated with experimental results and compared with EN1993-1-8. The demountability of the structure was discussed based on the tested specimen. A parametric analysis was carried out to investigate the effects of steel yield strength, end-plate thickness, beam thickness, column wall thickness, bolt diameter, number of bolts and location. Consequently, an analytical model was derived based on the component method to predict the moment-rotation relationships for the sub-assemblies with extended end-plates. The accuracy of the proposed model was calibrated by the experimental and numerical results. It is found that the FE model is fairly reliable to predict the initial stiffness and moment capacity of the joints, while EN1993-1-8 overestimates the initial stiffness extensively. The beam-to-column joints are shown to be demountable and reusable with a moment up to 53% of the ultimate moment capacity. The end-plate thickness and column wall thickness have a significant influence on the joint behaviour, and the layout of double bolt-rows in tension is recommended for joints with extended end-plates. The derived analytical model is capable of predicting the moment-rotation relationship of the structure.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.443-460
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• 2016

In this paper, the efficiency and effectiveness of two strengthening methods for upgrading behavior of the two external weak reinforced concrete (RC) beam-column joints were experimentally investigated under cyclic loading. Since two deficient external RC joints with reduced beam height and low strength concrete were strengthened using one-way steel prop and curbs with and without steel revival sheets on the beam. The cyclic performance of these strengthened specimens were compared with two another control external RC beam-column joints, one the standard RC joint that had not two mentioned deficiencies and another had both. Therefore, four half-scale RC joints were tested under cyclic loading.The experimental results showed that these innovative strengthening methods (RC joint with revival sheet specially) surmounted the deficiencies of weak RC joints and upgraded their performance and bearing capacity, stiffness degradation, energy absorption, up to those of standard RC joint. Also, results exhibited that the prop at joint acted as a fuse element due to adding steel revival sheets on the RC beam and showed better behavior than that of the specimen without steel revival sheets. In other words by stiffening of beam, the prop collected all damages due to cyclic loading at itself and acted as the first line of defense and prevented from sever damages at RC joint.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.585-603
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• 2013

Generally the required strength and stiffness of an I-shaped beam to the box-shaped column connection is achieved if continuity plates are welded to the column flanges from all sides. However, welding the forth edge of a continuity plate to the column flange may not be easily done and is normally accompanied by remarkable difficulties. This study was aimed to propose an alternative for box columns with continuity plates to diminish such problems. For this purpose a double-web I-shaped column was proposed. In this case the strength and rotational stiffness of the connection was provided by nearing the column webs to each other. Finite element studies on about 120 beam-column connections showed that the optimum proportion of the distance between two column webs and the width of the column flange (parameter ${\beta}$) was a function of the ratio of the beam flange width to the column flange width (parameter ${\alpha}$). Hence, based on the finite element results, an equation was proposed to estimate the optimum value of parameter ${\beta}$ in terms of parameter ${\alpha}$ to achieve the highest connection performance. Results also showed that the strength and ductility of post-Northridge connections of such columns are in average 12.5 % and 54% respectively higher than those of box-shaped columns with ordinary continuity plates. Therefore, a double-web I-shaped column of optimum arrangement might be a proper replacement for a box column with continuity plates when beams are rigidly attached to it.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.169-180
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• 2017

Cyclic loading tests for beam-to-column weak-axis connections were performed to investigate the seismic performance. In this study, the connections were developed to improve the constructability on the basis of investigation for existing small-size steel structures. The primary test parameter is the number of high-tension bolts which are used to connect steel beam and column using exterior and interior flange plates. Test results showed that the number of bolts had a significant effect on the cyclic behavior of beam-column weak-axis connections. From the analysis of test results, it is concluded that more than four bolts in the connections can satisfy the requirements of semi-rigid connection presented in current design codes. All of specimens showed the bearing failure around bolt holes and fracture at the beam flange. However, when the web height and the flange width is relatively small, the number of the bolts used in the connections might be limited. Thus, the additional research in this area is needed.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.741-751
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• 2010

An experimental study was performed to investigate the earthquake resistance of the beam-column connections as a part of a precast concrete moment-resisting frame that uses precast concrete U-shaped shells for the beams. Five full-scale precast concrete specimens and one conventional monolithic concrete specimen were tested under cyclic loading. The parameters for this test were the reinforcement ratio, stirrup spacing, and end-strengthening details of the precast beam shell. The test results showed that regardless of the test parameters, the precast concrete beam-column connections showed good load-carrying capacity and deformation capacity, which were comparable to those of conventional monolithic concrete specimen. However, at large deformations, the beam-column connections of the precast concrete specimens were subjected to severe strength degradation due to diagonal shear cracks and the bond-slip of re-bars at the joint region. For this reason, the energy dissipation capacity and stiffness of the precast concrete specimens were significantly less than those of the cast-in-place specimen.