Seismic Rehabilitation of Deficient Steel Moment Resisting Frames Through Stiff Rocking Cores

Abstract eng:
Based on the research outcome of a project recently funded through the U.S. NSF-NEESR program, this paper assesses adequacy of a seismic rehabilitation technology for Steel Moment Resisting Frames (SMRFs) vulnerable to drift concentrations and soft-story failures. The technology installs a single or multiple Stiff Rocking Core (SRC) pinned to the foundation and connected to a deficient multi-story SMRF to re-distribute seismic forces along its height and create more uniform inter-story drift and ductility demand distributions. This investigation implemented the SRC technology in two archetype SMRFs including one three-story and one nine-story. Results from nonlinear static analyses show that the SRC technology can reduce inter-story drift concentration in both low-rise and mid-rise SMRFs regardless of the seismic force distributions and drift limits considered in design. Additionally, the influence of SRC configuration was studied. It was found that the SRC extending along the entire height of a SMRF is more preferable than the one extending over the bottom potion of the system, although these two SRC options can be both valid.

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