Development of a routine for the characterisation of innovative dissipative friction joints

Abstract

Title:Development of a routine for the characterization of innovative dissipative friction joints. Master thesis presented in view of obtaining the degree of civil engineer.

Steel structures have been commonly used in areas where seismic activity is expected in the last decades. Their performance is very stable under cyclic loading conditions and makes them a very good solution in earthquake prone areas. However, when they are subjected to exceptional seismic events, the input energy is dissipated by deformation of structural elements and leads to severe damage and consequently high repair cost. In order to avoid this situations, an innovative beam-to-column joint had been designed, a new type of connection proposed by a group of researchers involved in the European Research program named “FREEDAM”. The proposed research has as a goal the development of a new design of connections able to withstand without any damage the rotation demands due to seismic events, namely “Free From Damage Connections”. The objective of this dissertation is to study the behavior of FREEDAM joint and create a software which can evaluate the joint and calculate the M-φ curve. Specifically, the program which has been used is MATLAB and the software which has been created takes into consideration the following cases a) the position of the innovative joint, for example if it is an external or internal joint, b) the bending, if it is a sagging or hogging bending moment, c) the use of stiffeners or not and d) the appearance of slippage. Finally, the M-φ curve of the MATLAB software is compared with the one from the laboratory’s results.

Author: Aikaterini Kampouri Supervisors:Jean-François Demonceau Jean-Pierre Jaspart Academic year: 2016-2017