RESEARCH ARTICLE
Concentrically Braced Frames: European vs. North American Seismic Design Provisions
Silvia Costanzo*, Landolfo Raffaele
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2017Volume: 11
Issue: Suppl-1, M11
First Page: 453
Last Page: 463
Publisher ID: TOCIEJ-11-453
DOI: 10.2174/1874149501711010453
Article History:
Received Date: 17/11/2015Revision Received Date: 02/05/2016
Acceptance Date: 22/06/2016
Electronic publication date: 30/06/2017
Collection year: 2017
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
A critical review of seismic design provisions for concentrically braced frames (CBFs) in both European and North American (i.e. US and Canadian) codes is presented in this paper. Indeed, even though those codes are based on capacity design philosophy, different requirements and different approaches are used to guarantee the hierarchy of resistances between dissipative and non-dissipative elements, thus leading different overall seismic performance. In detail, the main issues critically discussed are (i) the ductility classes and the correlated force-reduction factors; (ii) the structural analysis methods permitted by different codes; (iii) the modelling aspects of braces; (iv) the detailing rules for both dissipative (bracing members) and non-dissipative elements. Synoptic tables summarizing the corresponding assumptions and requirements in different codes are provided.