Open Access

ARTICLE

Fragility Assessment of Pre-Northridge Steel Moment Frames Using Finite-Length Plastic Hinge Elements and Concentrated Plasticity Fracture Elements

Filipe L. A. Ribeiro^1,*, Andre R. Barbosa², Luis C. Neves³

1 National Laboratory of Civil Engineering (LNEC) & CERIS-Civil Engineering Research and Innovation for Sustainability, DECivil, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal.
2 School of Civil and Construction Engineering, Oregon State University, Oregon, USA and University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
3 Resilience Engineering Research Group, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK.

*Corresponding Author: Filipe L. A. Ribeiro. Email: .

(This article belongs to this Special Issue: Advances in OpenSees Applications to Civil Engineering)

Computer Modeling in Engineering & Sciences 2019, 120(3), 657-676. https://doi.org/10.32604/cmes.2019.06296

Abstract

Although pre-Northridge earthquake steel moment resisting frame buildings have been shown to be susceptible to brittle connection failures, they still represent a large fraction of the existing steel buildings in the United States of America. In this study, the performance of the 3- and 9-story Los Angeles pre-Northridge SAC buildings are analyzed considering ductile and brittle beam-column connection failures, and their uncertainty. This paper contributes to understanding the influence of uncertainty associated with connections brittle fracture on building interstory deformation capacity and its impact on bias and variability of fragility functions and loss assessment. The results show that considering brittle connections leads to significantly larger drift demands and to higher repair costs, particularly under intense ground shaking. New fragility curve parameters are derived that account for the effect of the uncertainty of the strength and deformation capacity of brittle connections.

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Keywords

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