Abstract
Typical steel moment-frame structures in the United States comprise a few seismic frames and many gravity frames, which include “continuous columns” that are pin-connected to beams. These continuous columns, which are often ignored in seismic design, can improve the seismic performance of the structure. This study investigates the effects of continuous columns on the structural stability and seismic response of building frames. Stability coefficients representing the separate and combined effects of geometric and material nonlinearities are used with a simplified modeling technique, which separates the shear-type and flexural-type lateral-force-resisting systems in moment frames. Relationships between continuous column stiffness ratio and the stability coefficients, inter-story drift, and the drift concentration factor are presented. It is shown that for realistic structures, the columns in the seismic frames are generally sufficient to prevent unstable response and large drift concentrations, and the inclusion of gravity continuous column stiffness tends to decrease both the drift concentration and inter-story drift.
