A PARAMETRIC SURVEY OF THE INFLUENCE OF THE SEMI-RIGID CONNECTIONS ON THE SHAKEDOWN OF ELASTO-PLASTIC FRAMES
Abstract
In the past it was generally assumed that the connection of the beams and columns of the steel-framed multistorey structures are either rigid or pinned. In the reality, however, they are semi-rigid. This circumstance influences significantly the behaviour of the entire structure, therefore, it has to be taken into consideration in the analysis and design. In this paper a parametric study is presented to analyse the influence of the semi-rigid connections on the shakedown of elasto-plastic steel framed structures under multi-parameter static loading. To control the plastic behaviour of the structure bound on the complementary strain energy of the residual forces is also applied. The semi-rigid behaviour is modelled by appropriate internal springs at the beam column-connections. The formulation of the problem yields to nonlinear mathematical programming which is solved by the use of an iterative procedure. The parametric study is illustrated by the solution of an example.