Cyclic responses of three 2-story seismic concentrically braced frames

Three full scale two-story steel concentrically braced frames (CBFs) were tested at the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering (NCREE) in Taipei. The specimen is a single bay with the braces arranged in a two-story X-brace configuration. The main differences among the three tests are the brace types (hollow structural or wide-flange section) and the design criteria adopted for the gusset plate connections. Results of these three tests confirm that the two-story X-shape steel CBFs all have rather good energy dissipation characteristics up to a story drift of about 0.03 radians under the cyclically increasing lateral displacements. Severe brace local buckling and out-of-plane displacements were observed during each test. Tests confirm that both the 2t-linear and 8t-elliptical designs of the gusset plate connection provide satisfactory ductility for the steel CBF. Hollow structural section (HSS) braces fractured at a story drift smaller than that found using wide flange sections. The nonlinear fine element method (FEM) program ABAQUS was used to simulate the responses of the specimen. The base shear versus the story drift relationships obtained from the tests and the FEM analytical results are quite agreeable in various levels of lateral frame displacement. The analytical results confirm that the severe out-of-plane buckling of the braces can be accurately simulated. FEM analyses also illustrate that the steel moment resisting frame takes about 40% story shear when the inter-story drift is greater than 0.02 radians.