LARGE-SCALE SEISMIC TESTING OF KNEE-BRACE-FRAME By T. Balendra,’ Fellow, ASCE, E. L. Lim,’ and C. Y. Liaw” ‘ApsraAct: In a knee-brace-frame (KBF), one end of the brace is connected to a short knee element instead ‘of beam-column join. The brace provides the required lateral stiffness, whereas the ductility is obtained through paper, When a two-story KBF with rolled I-sections as knee members was subjected to base excitation ‘rough pseudo-dynamic testing, inducing a shear stain of O1, it was found that the KBF could dissipate 2 large amount of energy without any pinching inthe hysteretic loops or significant deterioration in strength and slifess provided that the knees are designed to inhibit local and lateral-torsional buckling. The test results reveal that the variation of shear stress with the shear strain in the knee could be approximated by a bilinear hysteretic curve with a strain hardening slope of 0,020.04. The out-of-plane displacements atthe knee-brace joints and vertical displacements atthe knee-beam joints are found to be smal. INTRODUCTION ‘The earthquake-resistant design philosophy is a three-tiered approach. Fist, the structures must have adequate lateral stif- ‘ness to control the interstory drifs such that no damage would ‘occur to nonstructural elements during minor but frequently ‘curring earthquakes. Second, during moderate earthquakes, some damage to nonstructural elements is permitted, but the structural elements must have adequate strength to remain elastic So that no damage would occur, Third, during rare and strong earthquakes, the structure must be ductile enough to prevent collapse, although one should aim for repairable dam- ‘age s0 that retrofiting would be feasible. ‘Many buildings have been constructed in the area of high seismic activities. These buildings are designed to resist lateral Toads arising from earthquakes. The commonly used structural systems are the moment resisting frames, concentric braced frames, and more recenily the eccentric braced frames (Bal- ‘endra 1993). Moment resisting frames have been widely used for low-to-medium rise buildings. Besides having high energy dissipating capacity, they also offer unobstructed panels, which are often required for architectural reasons. The conventional ‘design approach is to adopt the "strong column-weak beam"* ‘concept, where the member sizes are proportioned in such @ way that under severe lateral loads, plastic hinges would be formed in the beams to prevent damage to the columns. Due to the deformation of the panel zone atthe beam-column joint (Popov and Bertero 1980), the interstory drifts for this system are often too excessive even under small lateral loads. This leads to an uneconomical design in high-rise buildings or buildings where the requirement on permissible drifts is more stingent It is generally more economical to resist lateral loads and control deflections with bracing such as that used in the con- ‘centric braved frames. The concenttically braced frame is a ‘conventional bracing system where center lines of the brace ‘pass through the beam-column joins. In this way, the system tse forms a vertical truss that can resist the lateral force more effectively by its axial stiffness rather than bending action. "assoc. Prof, Dept of Cv. Engrg, National Univ. of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, Singapore 11960, “Engr, APG GEO-SYSTEMS Pre Lid, 24 Kranji Loop, Singapore “19860. Assoc. Prof, Dept of Ci. Engrp., Nasonsl Univ. of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent Singapore 119260. ‘Note, Associate Editor: Nicholas P, Jones, Discusion open util June 1, 1997, To extend the closing date one month a writen fequest Must be filed withthe ASCE Manager of Journals. The manuscript for this Paper was submited for review and possible pubicaden on April 19, 1098s, This paper part of te Journal of Srctural Engineering, Vol 123, No, 1, January, 1997. GASCE, ISSN 0733-9445970001-0011~ (0010/8800 '+ 5.50 per page. Paper No. 10590, Unfortunately, it has poor energy dissipation capability be- cause of buckling of the brace. Experiments by Popov and ‘Black (1981) revealed that the brace would buckle repeatedly ‘and hence the load carrying capacity would be dramatically decreased. This would affect the overall stability of the frame. ‘Therefore, great care must be taken in employing this system in any earthquake resisting structures. Eccentrically braced frames have been proposed by Roeder and Popov (1977, 1978) to economically meet both the stiff- ress requirement and the ductility requirement. In this system, clther one end or both ends of the brace are connected to the beams instead of the beam-column joints. The “shear link," ‘which is the short beam segment between the brace-beam and bbeam-column join, is designed to dissipate energy through shear yielding during severe earthquakes. Thus, the shear link facts a5 a ductile fuse to safeguard the brace against possible buckling. The stiffness of this system is comparable to that of the concentric braced frame. Therefore, the story drifts can be ‘kept to a minimum. However, as the shear links are part of [primary structural members that support the floor system, the retrofitting after a major earthquake is costly ‘As an alternative to the commonly used structural system, 1 knce-brace-frame (KBF) was proposed by Balendra et al. (1990). This is a new bracing system where the diagonal brace ‘anchored to a short member instead of the beam-column is short member is called the ‘knee element"* which | designed to yield in flexure, whereby buckling of the brace is prevented. The proposed KBF system was different from the one proposed by Aristizabal-Ochoa (1986) where the brace was designed for tension only. In a recent study by Balendra etal, (1994), the KBF is designed in such a way thatthe knee yields in shear instead of flexure under severe excitation. A 50 mm X $0 mm built-up F-section was used in a one story KBF to study the inelastic behavior of the structural system. ‘The knee was subjected to a shear strain of 0.008 before fail- ure due to tearing of the web was observed. Unpinched hys- teretic loops were obtained without any significant deteriora- tion in strength or stiffness when the knee was designed against local buckling and lateral torsional buckling. The pur- pose of this investigation is to verify the ductile behavior of KBP through large-scale dynamic testing of a two-story KBF, with rolled wide flange I-sections as knee members, When the later is subjected to a shear strain that is about 10 ‘umes larger than the previous investigation by Balendra etal 1994), (CHARACTERISTICS OF KBF ‘There are several ways of placing the knee in a KBF. It can be placed at the bottom, top, or at both ends of the brace. ‘When the knee element is placed at both ends of the brace, the stiffness of the frame would be reduced without any im: JOURNAL OF STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING / JANUARY 1997/11provement in ductility (Balendra et al. 1991). Furthermore, as ‘an extra knee is required with more connections, the construc- tion costs, including the workmanship and material, would be higher. Thus, in this stady, a KBF with a knee element only atone end of the brace is considered, ‘The KBF must have suficient stiffness to prevent structural as well as nonstructural damage during frequently occurring ‘minor earthquakes. The elastic lateral stiffness depends on its ‘geometry and section properties of its member. Nondimen- sional analysis shows (Balendra etal. 1990) that shorter knees are preferred for higher stiffness. ‘A proper choice of the length ofthe knee clement in a KBF is important, agit affects not only the lateral stiffness but also the mode of yielding. A shorter knee element will yield in shear, while a longer one will yield in bending. For the knee ‘element to yield in shear, the longer segment of the knee gen erated by the intersection of the diagonal brace and the knee ‘member, denoted as J, should satisfy the following condition: Ma nat’ o where MP = reduced plastic moment contributed by flanges ‘only; and V, = plastic shear force. They are defined as follows Mz = vba — 90, ® Youd 9% o in which 0, dy ty by and fy = yield stress, depth, flange thickness, flange width, and web thickness of knee member, respectively, "To satisfy (I), it is necessary to use sections with a higher ratio of section modulus to shear area. As a comparison, ‘among the standard sections that are produced commercially, ‘wide flange is most suitable, It has a higher section modulus to shear area ratio than rectangular hollow sections, as it has ‘only one web that contributes to the shear area DESIGN OF TEST FRAME ‘To study the application of a KBF in multistory buildings, a two-story test frame shown in Fig. I had been designed, constructed, and tested using a multiactuator pseudo-dynamic testing system. This frame represents a half-scale model of a FIG. 1. Dimeneions.ot Two-Story Test Frame 412/JOURNAL OF STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING / JANUARY 1997 ‘normal building with a panel height-o-width ratio of 2/3. Two inelastic dynamic tests designated as test 1 and test 2 were ‘conducted on this test frame when it was subjected to base excitation. For test 1, the same section was used for the top and the bottom story’knees. But for test 2, a smaller section ‘was chosen for the top story knee as the shear force in this ‘knee was smaller than that in the bottom story knee, The de- sign of various members ofthe test frame is described next, Beams, Columns, and Braces "The beams and columns were I-sections of sizes 200 X 150 x 30.6 kg/m and 200 x 200 X 56.2 kg/m, respectively. The braces were made of two C-channels (125 X 65 6 X 13.4 kg/m) connected back-to-back with a 16 mm gap in between by 150 x 150 X 12 mm thick batten at S00 mim spacings. All of the sections used were grade 43C (“BS $950" 1990) hot rolled carbon stesl. These members were designed to remain elastic and the braces were designed against buckling for story drift corresponding to the ultimate limit state, which is taken as 0.015, Knees ‘Wide flange I-section of size 125 X 125 x 23.8 kg/m was used for the first and second story knee members for test 1 For test 2, the second story knee member was replaced by a Wide flange [-section of size 100 X 100 X 17.2 kg/m. The sectional and mechanical properties for the knees are given in ‘Table I. A typical knee is shown in Fig, 2. To prevent tearing of the web, stiffeners are provided, as shown in Fig. 2. Em- ploying (1), the limiting value of i, for the knee member to yield in shear was found to be 636 mm for the 125 x 125 x 23.8 ke/m section and 447 mm for the 100% 100 17.2 TABLE 1._Propertos of Knee Elements for Tests 1 and 2 Test} Tost 2 Tost2 (both stories) | (rst story) | (second story) @ @ @) 138 12s 100 ns as 100, ‘62 ‘6 ‘se 31 34 73 295 300 83 2964 2062 351 3 32 25 27 201 289. hes ms os 402 409 200 es oe an 5 63 3 (d= tive, 177 18 | 147 yfgitertmn (atte tor other FIG. 2. Typical Knee Detala for Two-Story Test Frame 4)‘kg/m section. The segment between the brace-knee and knee- ‘column joints is governed by this limiting value. For the cho- sen dimensions of the frame, this length is equal to 313 mm, ‘which is less than the limiting values of The chosen sections were checked against clause 3.5 of BS '5950 (1990) for local buckling. It has a maximum width-to- thickness ratio of 6.5 for the flange and 17.7 for the web, Which are below the maximum limits of 8.5 and 79, respee- Lively, required to comply with the plastic section classification given in BS 5950. ‘Another possible mode of failure is the lateral buckling of the knee, which could lead to premature failure of this critical clement and hence affect the ductility of the frame. As lateral bracing of the knee-brace joint is generally difficult, the knee ‘member must be designed such that no lateral bracing is re- ‘quired. The laterally unsupported distance, [is defined in equation N9-1 in “Specification” (1989) as te, (12) : which is in imperial units. In metric units, the equation be- +s), ° here r= radius of gyration of member about its weak axis; and 6, = yield sess, the units being m and Nima’, respec- tively” From Table I, the minimum radius of gyration, 7, i found to be 25 em, which is forthe second story knee of test, 2."The yield suess for this knee was found to be 289 Nim Hence, from (3), the laterally unsupported length J, was com: ted as 1-445 ma. Iis found thatthe chosen size Slisis this Iinimam lateral bracing distance, asthe length of the knee between the beam-knee and column-knee joints is only 0.786, sm. Thus, the lateral stability ofthe knee is ensured. Connections ‘The beam-to-column joints were designed as moment-re- sisting joints. To develop full momentresistant capacity, the joints were welded all around with full penetration welds. In Addition, the web of the columns was stiffened with four pieces of 12 mim thick plates to prevent web buckling. The kknee-column and knee-beam connections were the same as those of the beam-column connections except that a 16 mim plate was inserted at the knee-beam and knee-column joints ‘0 that during retrofitting, the beam and coluran would not be damaged. ‘The braces were connected to columns and knees with high strength friction grip bolts to prevent slippage. The columns of the test frame were welded to base plates, which were con- nected to the testing rig by high strength friction grip bolts. ‘TEST SETUP AND INSTRUMENTATION ‘The pseudodynamic method was used to obtain the dynamic response of the test frames to base excitation. The equipment Tor the pseudodynamic test of a two degree-of-freedom system consists of two 65 t hydraulic actuators and their controllers. ‘A 386 microcomputer is used to control the test. A schematic diagram of the test setup is depicted in Fig. 3. Extemal dit- placement transducers are used to monitor the lateral displace: zmenis of the frame at two floor levels during pseudodynamic testing. Two linear variable type displacement transducers (LVDTS) with +50 mm stroke are used for this purpose. A second microcomputer is used to contro the data logger that scans data from strain gauges and displacement transducers monitoring the deflections of various members of the test Pee FIG. 3. Schematic Diagram for Pseudo-Dynamic Test on Two Story Frame FIG, 4, Psoude-Dynamic Test Setup frame. The photograph of the test setup is shown in Fig. 4 ‘The central difference integration scheme with # time step of 0.01 § was used to solve the equations of motion. Controlling two actuators simultaneously is complicated, as movement of fone actuator will affect the other. Therefore, the actuator ‘movements have to be syachronized so thatthe target displace- ‘ments are approached approximately at the same rate and reach the target at about the same time, Inthe system adopted in this study, the calculated displacement increments are di- vided into several small pitches. Each actuator will move, in tum, at a preset small step toward the piteh. If one actuator reaches the pitch within the allowable errr, it pauses until the cother actuator reaches the pitch before it proceeds to the next pitch. At the final pitch, the allowable error is reduced 10 e- Sure that the final targets are reached with reasonable accuracy. It is important to set the allowable errors correctly. If they are set t09 large, good results could not be obtained because the displacement errors would be accumulated. On the other hand, if they are set too small, longer time would be needed to reach the desired positions. In certain cases, the desired JOURNAL OF STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING / JANUARY 1997/13positions could not be reached at all because of interaction between the two actuators. The suitable allowable errors for intermediate pitch and final pitch depend on the accuracy of the spparaius and the type of test structure. This could be found after several tials. Lateral Supports In actual buildings, the lateral displacement of the frames is prevented by the cross frames. Thus in the laboratory testing, the test frame has to be supported laterally 10 ensure in-plane deflection. Two vertical frames, as shown in Fig. 5, had been used for this purpose. To restrain the lateral displacement but to allow in-plane displacement of the test frame, a set of four ‘vertical rollers was used as a holding device at each floor. The details of this device are shown in Fig. 6. It consists of wo vertically positioned rods on ether side ofthe loor beat. The rods were fitted to vertical plates through roller bearings at their ends, which allowed them to rotate freely about the Ver- tical axes, The vertical plates were fixed to the lateral support frame with four horizontal rods. The rods were also being used to adjust the distance between the support frame and the ver- a emia oe] Le ed bo sos aL sen is BE FIG. 5. Lateral Support Frames for Testing of Two-Story Frame FIG. 6. Detalls of Rollers for Lateral Support Frames 114) JOURNAL OF STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING / JANUARY 1907 Fie. Frames View of Test Frame, Test Rig, and Lateral Support tical plates so that the vertical rods were in contact with the ‘edges of the floor beam. Fig. 7 shows the lateral support and the testing rig, strong wall, strong floor, and the test frame. Instrumentation ‘The displacements and forces obtained in the pseudody- amie test provide the displacement-time history and the force- displacement hysteretic curves. However, in order to obtain the stress-strain hysteretic curves for individual members, the strain level of each individual member needs to be measured with strain gauges. The type of strain gauges used for this purpose were TML's FLA-10 with a gauge length of 10 mm for axial strains, and FRA-S for shear strains. The latter is a rectangular rosette which consists of three linear strain gauges: two at right angles to cach other and the third one at a 45° angle tothe first two. If strain are required at a location that is expected to un- ddergo a large amount of deformation, then the postyield type of strain gauges have to be used (YFLA-5 and YFRA-S for axial and shear strains, respectively). According to manufac~ turer's specification, FLA-10 and FRA-S have a working range ‘of 20,000 microstrains, whereas for YFLA-S and YFRA-S the ‘working range is 30,000 microstrains. However, these values can be achieved only if the contact surface is smooth and clean. The displacement transducers are used to monitor the displacements of the test frame at certain locations of interest For this purpose, the small range transducers are prefered for better accuracy. ‘The 25 mm transducer has an accuracy of 0.002 mm, whereas for a 50 mm transducer, the accuracy is 0.005 mm, Strain gauges and displacement transducers were installed at the locations shown in Fig. 8. There was a certain degree ff redundancy in the number of strain gauges, so that cross checks could be made to weed out any malfunctioning gauges. ‘During the tests, the strain values were collected and stored in diskettes. for postprocessing. The displacement transducers ‘were used to monitor the Vertical displacement at the knee ‘beam joints and out-ofplane movement of the knees at the Iknee-brace joints. These are the critical locations for floor damage and out-of-plane instability of the knees, At each time step, the data from these gauges were read and stored by a high-speed data acquisition system, which was conuolled bytot 1000 Location of Strain Gauge ‘8 microcomputer. This microcomputer performs the data ac- {uisition task upon receiving a signal from the microcomputer controlling the pseudodynamic test. The pseudodynamic test paused for 7 $ for data acquisition to be completed. This was fo ensure that the data collected were virally at the same instance. The test can also be paused manually to acquire data. ‘TEST RESULTS Tost 1 Before the inelastic test, preliminary tests were carried out to check the reliability of the test setup and the properties of the frame, These include static tests, free vibration tests, and elastic forced vibration tests. The purpose of performing @ Static test s to determine the structure's elastic stiffness matrix. I dq, is the displacement atthe mth floor due to a unit force at the nth floor, then the flexibility matrix becomes hs day dis diy The stiffness matrix is obtained by inverting the flexibility matrix shown in (6). ‘A free vibration test was carried out for a chosen mass to ‘determine the frictional force—if any. The effects of frictional force on the forced vibration response were accounted for by introducing an equivalent viscous damping. The elastic forced vibration tests were performed to ensure that the pseudody- namic test setup was functioning properly. Readings from all ‘of the displacement transducers and strain gauges were re- ‘corded and checked to make sure that all of these instruments hhad been placed properly and were in working condition. Then lastic dynamic test was performed to study the energy dissipating capacity of the knee members and the overall duc- tility of the frame. For the static test, a horizontal load of approximately 10 kN ‘was applied at the first floor of the test frame. The displace- ‘ments of the first and second floors were then recorded. The load was then increased by 10 kN and the displacements were again recorded. This process was repeated until one load cycle, ice, from 0 > 80 ~» 80> OKN, was completed. The gra- dients of the plot of displacement versus force correspond to the second column of the flexibility matrix described in the preceding section. The procedure was repeated with the load Acting at the second floor. The flexibility matrix thus obtained ‘was then inverted to give the following stiffness matrix: 8396 [Se F o =1,0835 2,124.1 @ ] mm ‘Rosettes, and Displacement Transducer © Displacement tronaducer Goat oP pene). (of 150,000 kg was assumed to be lumped at each floor. Thus, the ‘mass matrix becomes 150,000 0 m= [19 sto] ‘Asa result, the natural periods for this frame were 0.45 s and (0.15 s for the first and second modes, respectively. Several tests were then conducted, where the frame behaved clastically. Both sinusoidal base accelerations and the north- South component ofthe 1940 El Centro earthquake excitation ‘were used: Good agreement between the experimental results and the numereal solutions confirmed the reliability of the test For the inelastic tet, a sinusoidal base excitation of 20 duration was used. The frequency of the excitation a5 10 rad/s with ap inital amplitude of 040 mis", which increased by 0.25 mvs" after every four eycles. Ths input was chosen to study the maximum available ductility in the tes fame before any degradation in stiffness or strength. A mass proportional viscous damping of LOM was preseribed for the inelastic test. ‘This was equivalent to 5.06% and 1.69% of critical damping for the first and second modes, respectively “The test ad to-be stopped at 10.14 s because the dsplace- rent transducer reached its maximum limit of 25 mm. During this test it was observed that the upper portion of the first story knee had been badly damaged. A crack was found on the web near the upper Mange, as shown in Fig. 9(2). The lower portion of this knee showed signs of yielding, wit paint pocled off but no cracking was found. For the second story {Enee, both the upper and the lower portions, some paint peeled off indicating that the knee had yielded to some extent, 88 shown in Fig. 900). Table 2 shows the time of fst yielding at various locations, It is found that the upper portions of both the Knees yielded much easier than the lower portions. Thus, the energy dissipation was distrbuted among. the two stories instead of being concentrated in one story. “The displacemeat-ime history obtained forthe fis and sec- cond floors is shown in Figs. 10(e) and 10(b), respectively. To obiain the hysteretic loops of the first story, the fst story sheae force is calculaed by adding up the load cell readings from the two actuators. The drift of the fist story isthe reading from the LVDT atthe fist floor. To aban the hysteretic loops for the second story. the story shear is given by the reading from the second floor actuator, whereas the sory deft i the relative foor displacement calculated as the reading from the Second floor LVDT minus the reading fom fist floor LVDT. The story shear forces versus story drifts are shown in Figs 11) and 11(0) for frst and second stores, respectively. Both ® JOURNAL OF STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING / JANUARY 1997/15FIG. 9. Knee after Tst 1: (a) First Story; (6) Second Story TABLE 2._Time>ot First Yielding for Teste 1 and 2 Tet | Test? Location ) @) o @ @ Upper poston of rst sory Knee web 04s | 04s Upper pomion of second story knee web | 079 | 050 Lower potion of first story knee web 207 | 2m Lower portion of second story knee web | $25 | 442 Of the loops are unpinched and no significant deterioration in Strength or stiffness is observed. The yield (A,) and maximum (A. displacements for the frst floor were found to be 2.1 mm and 20.5 mm, respectively. This corresponds to a ductility Fac- tor (&,/A,) of 9.8, For the second floor, the yield and maxi- ‘mum absolute displacements were found to be 3.8 mm and 29.3 mm, respectively. The ductility factor obtained was 7.7 The shear stress-strain behavior for the frst and second story knees is shown in Fig. 12. Considering a free-body di- gram that formed by cutting through the frame horizontally just slightly below the second floor beam, the horizontal force in the second story knee is equivalent tothe summation of the actuator force and the shear forces in the two columns. The vertical force in the knee is the summation of the axial forces of the two columns. The axial and shear forces in the columns fre computed from the linear strain gauges mounted on the ‘columns at locations indicated in Fig. 8. The shear force in the second story knee is then the vectorial summation of the ‘components of horizontal and vertical forces in the direction perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the knee. The fist 116/ JOURNAL OF STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING / JANUARY 1997 (0) sane ter aaa 8 story Sheer (KN) ba. é (oF tor ag 8 Story Shear (kN) : 8 Story Dritta (umn) FIG. 11. Hysteretie Loope tor Test 1 story knee shear force was computed in a similar manner. The shear stresses were obtained by dividing the shear forces in the knees by the area of the web, whereas the shear strains ‘were measured directly using the rectangular rosettes pasted fon both sides of the web of the knee. Although the test was stopped at 10.14 s, the data from strain gauges were obtained only up to 7.12 s and 9.13 s for the upper portion of first- and second-story knees, respectively. No data were obtained after those times because the strain gauges were no longer in good contact with the surface of the member ater large deformation had taken place. The maximum member ductility factor, com- [puted from the upper portion of firs-story knee, was found t0 be 40.4. I te shear stress-strain relationships are bilinearized, then the strain hardening slopes are found to be in the range ‘of 0,020.04. This range is similar to what was obtained bye a : | | | i-| | a eee eee i sear stress (8/mm) FIG. 12. Shear Stress-Strain Loope of Test 1 Muto et al. (1988) for shear links, in tests conducted on a three-story eccentric braced frame using a pseudodynamic test method. The bilinear shear strain hardening ratio obtained for the single-story test frame by Balendra etal (1994) was 0.065, This value is higher than that obtained in test 1 because of different strain levels considered; the shear strain range for the single-story test frame was between —0.01 and 0.01, whereas in fest | of this study the shear strain range is ~0.1~0.1, ‘The maximum out-of-plane displacement of the firs-story knee was 0.66 mm, This is only 3.2% of the maximum dis- placement (20.5 mm) observed at the first floor. The corre- sponding displacementspan ratio is 1/1,500 where the span is the total length of the knee. For the second-story knee, the ‘maximum out-of-plane displacement was 1.03 mm. This is equivalent to a displacemend/span ratio of 1/961. The small out-ofiplane displacements for both knees suggest that the knees were strong against lateral-torsional buckling. The ver~ tical displacement of the first-loor beam at the knee-beam Joint, which represents the extent of damages of the floor beams, was found to be 1.49 mm. This is equivalent to 2 displacemenvspan ratio of 1/870 where the span is taken as the shorter of the distances between beam-knee joint and bbeam-column joint. This ratio is considered to be very small Test2 ‘When test 1 had to be stopped due to the limitation of the displacement transducer, it was found that the energy dissi- pation in the second-story knee was not substantial. ‘To en- hhance the energy dissipating capacity of the test frame by wtil- izing the energy dissipating capacity of both ofthe knees, the test was repeated with a smaller knee size forthe second stor. Moreover, inthis test LVDTs with +50 mm stroke were used instead of #25 mm. ‘A staic test was again carried out to determine the elastic stiffness of this retrofitted frame. The test was performed in the same manner as deseribed earlier. As a result the stiffness matrix was found to be _[ 39 «(8 ~a89.7 1,888.1 ‘The masses of 144,920 kg and 129,105 kg were assumed to be lumped at the first and second floors, respectively. These i © (Fete we ‘Story Drfte (m8) FIG. 13. Hysteretic Loops for Test2 masses were selected to keep the natural periods the same as those in test 1. The chosen mass matrix was wee [ Oa) 129,105, For the inelastic test, the base excitation of test 1 was again used. A mass proportional viscous damping equivalent to LOM was prescribed for the inelastic test. The test was stopped at 15.74 s when the displacements became very large due to the fracture of first-story knee. The yield (A,) and ulti- ‘mate (A,) displacements for te first floor were found to be 2.1 ‘mm and 29.3 mm, respectively. This corresponds to a ductility ‘of 140. For the second floor, the yield and ultimate displace- zments were 3.7 mm and 48.2 mm, respectively. The ductility obiained was 13.0. The hysteretic curves are shown in Figs. 13(a) and 13(b) for the first and second stores, respectively ‘The sequence of yielding is shown in Table 2. The sequence of yielding remained the same as in test 1, but the time at ‘which the first yielding occurred at both portions of the second story knee had been significantly reduced. The maximum out- of plane displacement of the first story knee was 1.30 mm, ‘This is equivalent to a displacemenvspan ratio of 1/762. For the second-story Knee, the out-of-plane displacement was 2.9 ‘mm, which is equivalent to a displacemenvspan ratio of 1/ 341. The vertical displacement of the first-floor beam at the ‘beam-knee joint was found to be 3.50 mm. This is equivalent to a displacemenvspan ratio of 1/200. Again, all these ratios are considered to be small ‘The damaged first-story knee ater the inelastic testis shown in Fig. 14(a). I is seen that the upper portion of the knoe web bas been damaged. It failed by tearing of the web near the junction of the web and flange. The fatlure mode and the Io- ation are similar to those in test 1. For the second:-story knee, as shown in Fig. 14(b), no tearing of the web or erack was ‘observed. However, the upper portion of the knee has been bent. This shows that this knee has yielded to some extent. Energy Dissipation ‘The input energy to a structure is computed as ce. ‘JOURNAL OF STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING / JANUARY 1997/17fa) FIG. 14. Knee aftr Test 2:(a) First Story; (b) Second Story | Inpcereay Tee) FIG. 16. Energy Balance for Tests 1 and 2 ‘where m, and aj = mass and absolute acceleration for ith story N= total number of stories; and dU, = ground displacement due to earthquake. The energy dissipation is mainly contrib- ‘uted by the inelastic hysteretic energy. The inelastic hysteretic energy for each story isthe area of the story shear versus the interstory displacement loops. The total inelastic energy is then the summation of the energy {rom each story ‘The input energy and inelastic hysteretic energy for test and test 2 are depicted in Fig. 15. The energy dissipated in test I by hysteretic damping is 78.4% of the input energy. For {18/JOURNAL OF STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING / JANUARY 1997 test 2, this value is 82.7%. It is seen that most of the input energy has been dissipated by hysteretic damping. For up to 10 s, the input energy as well asthe energy ab- sorbed by hysteretic damping is more for test 1 than for test 2. Since a smaller section was used for the knee element in the second story of test 2 in order to Keep the natural period the same as in test 1, smaller masses were assumed 10 be Jumped at the floor levels. As a result, the input energy was reduced, However, the ratio of the energy dissipated by hys- teretic damping to input energy is higher for test 2 than for test 1. This shows that the knees of test 2 are better utilized for energy dissipation than those of test 1 CONCLUSIONS A large-scale two story knee-brace frame with shear yield- ing knees has been tested for ductility using pseudodynamic tests. The tests reveal that when the size of the knees in both stories is chosen in such a way that the knees are well utilized for energy dissipation, the KBF can dissipate a large amount ‘of energy without an appreciable loss of strength. The lateral displacements of the frame and the floor displacements at the ‘knee-beam joints are found to be minimal. Thus, a suitably designed KBP, inhibiting local or Iateral-torsional buckling of the knees, would provide required strength and ductility to Withstand severe earthquakes, in addition to providing ade- uate stifness during moderate to severe earthquakes. APPENDIX|. REFERENCES ‘Arisizabl-Ochon, 1D. (1986). “Disposable knee bracing: improvement "in senmic design of sel frames” J. Sruct. Bary, ASCE, 1120), Sas 1552, Balendra, T (1993). Vibration of buildings o wind and earthquake loads ‘Springer-Veviag, London. Balendr T Lim, EL, and Lee, S. L, (1998), "Doct knee braced ‘rames wih shear yielding knee for seiamic resistant stares” Engrg. Suc, 16), 263-269. Balen, Sam, MT and Li C.¥. (1990). “Diagonal brace with octle have anchor for aseismic eel fame.” Earthauake Engrg and Struct, Dyn, 19(6), 887-858, “BS 5950: Pat 1. Code of practice for design in simple and comtinaous ‘onstacton: hot rolled ston” Scar ase of stelwork ia bude ‘Brish Standards Insn. 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Ist. of Stel Constr, (AISC), Chicago APPENDIX !I, NOTATION The following symbols are used in this paper: by = Mange width: dd = depth of section; 40, = ground displacement due to earthquake; E, = Input energy: F = member flexibility matrix; K 5 stifiness matrix of test frames 1, = maximum laterally unsupported distance:longer segment of knee member; ange thickness; ‘mass matrix; web thickness; reduced plastic moment; Y; = plastic shear capacity of section; ‘mass on ith story; A, = maximum displacement, numberof stories; 13; = Yield displacement; and radius of gyration in weak axis ©, = yield stress. JOURNAL OF STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING / JANUARY 1997/19