EVALUATION OF THE SECOND-ORDER EFFECTS IN STEEL SEMI-RIGID FRAMES USING APPROXIMATE METHOD AND RIGOROUS ANALYSIS
Steel plane frames. Semi-rigid connections. Second-order effects. Approximate B1-B2 method. Nonlinear elastic analysis.
The current norms for design of steel structures guide the consideration of second-order effects in structural analysis, as these effects can cause significant variations in the distribution of internal forces, in the values of nodal displacements as well as in the structure stability. Several standards have presented approximate analysis procedures that are capable of considering second-order effects, such as the B1-B2 method, since the most precise consideration is time-consuming and complex. The connections between beam and columns play an important role in the behavior of steel structures, since the overall structural response is influenced by the flexibility of these connections. In general, beam-column connections are considered with idealized behavior in structural analysis, either fully rigid or fully pinned, which can result in inaccurate structural responses, because many connections exhibit an intermediate nonlinear behavior, called semi-rigid. The consideration of semi-rigid connections in the modeling of steel plane frames is relevant, as it reflects the behavior of the structure in a more reliable way and thus allows a second-order elastic analysis closer to the real behavior of the structures. In this context, this work aims to evaluate the influence of the beam-column connection behavior on the elastic structural analysis considering the second-order effects, by applying the approximate B1-B2 method and the rigorous method. For this purpose, the requesting forces and horizontal nodal displacements of several studied frames were determined, using the PPLANLEP program, from a 2nd order elastic analysis, which takes into account the nonlinear connection behavior by applying multilinearized M-θr curves for rigorous analyzes, and secant stiffnesses ki0 e kb for approximate analyzes. The comparative analyzes demonstrated that the approximate B1-B2 method including the influence of the connections presented a good correlation with the rigorous method in 2nd elastic order.