• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.617-624
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• 2008

Well-designed steel moment connections will undergo local buckling before they exhaust their available rotation capacity, and inelastic post-buckling deformation plays a major role in defining the connection rotation capacity. An approximate analytical method to model strength degradation and failure of beam plastic hinges due to local buckling and estimation of the seismic rotation capacity of fully restrained beam-column connections in special steel moment-resisting frames under both monotonic and cyclic loading conditions is proposed in this study. This method is based on the plastic mechanism and a yield line plastic hinge (YLPH) model whose geometry is determined using the shapes of the buckled plastic hinges observed in experiments. The proposed YLPH model was developed for the improved WUF-W and RBS connections and validated in comparison with experimental data. The effects of the beam section geometric parameters on the rotation capacity were discussed in the companion paper (parametric studies).