• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.541-558
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• 2019

In Special Concentrically Braced Frames (SCBFs), vertical and horizontal components of the brace force must be resisted by column and beam, respectively but normal force component existing at the gusset plate-to-column and beam interfaces, creates out-of-plane action making distortion in column and beam faces adjacent to the gusset plate. It is a main concern in Hollow Structural Section (HSS) columns and beams where their webs and gusset plate are not in the same plane. In this paper, a new gusset plate passing through the HSS columns and beams, named as through gusset plate, is proposed to study the force transfer mechanism in such gusset plates of SCBFs compared to the case with conventional gusset plates. For this purpose, twelve SCBFs with diagonal brace and HSS columns and twelve SCBFs with chevron brace and HSS columns and beams are considered. For each frame, two cases are considered, one with through gusset plates and the other with conventional ones. Based on numerical results, using through gusset plates prevents distortion and out-of-plane deformation at HSS column and beam faces adjacent to the gusset plate helping the entire column and beam cross-sections to resist respectively vertical and horizontal components of the brace force. Moreover, its application increases energy dissipation, lateral stiffness and strength around 28%, 40% and 32%, respectively, improving connection behavior and raising the resistance of the normal force components at the gusset plate-to-HSS column and beam interfaces to approximately 4 and 3.5 times, respectively. Finally, using such through gusset plates leads to better structural performance particularly for HSS columns and beams with larger width-to-thickness ratio elements.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.441-465
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• 2015

This paper presents the experimental results of flexural and compression steel members strengthened with carbon fiber reinforced polymers (CFRP) sheets. In the flexural test, the five specimens were fabricated and the test parameters were the number of CFRP ply and the ratio of partial-length bonded CFRP sheets of specimen. The CFRP sheet strengthened steel beam had failure mode: CFRP sheet rupture at the mid span of steel beams. A maximum increase of 11.3% was achieved depending on the number of CFRP sheet ply and the length of CFRP sheet. In the compression test, the nine specimens were fabricated and the main parameters were: width-thickness ratio (b/t), the number of CFRP ply, and the length of the specimen. From the tests, for short columns it was observed that two sides would typically buckle outward and the other two sides would buckle inward. Also, for long columns, overall buckling was observed. A maximum increase of 57% was achieved in axial-load capacity when 3 layers of CFRP were used to wrap HSS columns of b/t = 60 transversely.