FRICTION DAMPED STEEL MOMENT-RESISTING FRAMES SUBJECTED TO LONG-DISTANCE EARTHQUAKES: INFLUENCE OF WELD FRACTURES

It has been generally accepted that steel moment-resisting frames behave in a ductile manner under seismic excitations. However, during the 1994 Northridge earthquake in California, weld fractures at the beam-to-column connections occurred in many steel buildings. Such brittle failures obviously precluded the traditional ductile-behaviour assumption and had a significant effect on the responses of steel moment-resisting frames. In this paper, …