Preliminary sizing for STEEL STRUCTURES

Ref: Earthquake design practice for buildings by Edmund Booth.

A rough preliminary indication of required member sizes may be obtained for a typical building by
assuming a total seismic weight of say 10 kN per square metre of floor area (to allow for the structure,
permanent finishes and a proportion of the live load). Equivalent lateral forces can then be obtained,
using standard code procedures, and the bending forces in the beams estimated by assuming points of
contraflexure exist at the midspan of beams and mid-height of columns and that inner columns take twice
the shear of external columns. The required beam flexural strengths can then be checked. The column
must be sized by capacity design principles; their bending strength should be 30% greater than that of the
beams, while simultaneously resisting axial loads due to gravity, plus those induced by flexural yielding of
the beams which, for a preliminary design, can conservatively be assumed to take place simultaneously
in all beams.

However, deflections rather than strength may well govern. A preliminary estimate of storey drift can be
obtained from the equation

d =x(kb+ kc)(h2)Vc
----- ---
(kb kc) (12E)

where x is the ductility factor; d is the storey drift (m); kb =Ib/Lfor a representative beam (m3); kc =Ic/h for
a representative internal column (m 3); Ib, Ic are moments of inertia of beam and column respectively (m 4);
L is the centre-to-centre spacing of columns (m); h is the storey height (m); E is Young’s modulus of steel
(kPa); and Vc is the shear in the representative column (kN).

The ductility factor x is the factor by which the deflections obtained from an elastic analysis must be
multiplied to allow for plastic deformations; in Eurocode 8, x is taken as the behaviour factor q, and in IBC
it is the factor Cd given in Table 1617.6.2 in the IBC.

The storey drift must then be compared with the maximum permitted in the governing code. In
Eurocode8, this would generally be 1% of the storey height under the ultimate design earthquake, but up
to twice this deflection is allowed where the cladding and partitions are not brittle, or are suitably isolated
from the frame. IBC generally requires a limit of 1% of the storey height.

A procedure such as this can form the basis for a more rigorous design, perhaps
using a computer program, by selecting member sizes that will allow a satisfactory
solution to be found without too many trial iterations.

BEAMS:

The beam’s flange and web thickness must be sufficient to limit local flange and web buckling, and
Eurocode 8 requires sections that conform to Eurocode 3 Class 1 (or Class 2 for DCMstructures)
specifications.

Lateral torsional buckling must also be controlled by adequate lateral restraint. Beam flexural strength is
assessed on the basis of the seismic analysis, although as noted earlier this may not provide sufficient
stiffness to limit deflections to within code limits in tall buildings.
Flexural hinges forming in beams must be capable of sustaining an adequate plastic rotation. A minimum
rotation capacity of 0.025 radians for DCM and 0.035 radians for DCH is specified by Eurocode 8, and in
addition the loss of stiffness and strength under an unspecified number of cyclic loads should not exceed
20%. In the AISC code, the plastic rotation capacity of special moment frames must be at least 0.030
radians, reducing to 0.020 radians for intermediate ductility frames and 0.010 radians for ordinary frames.
In both the AISC and Eurocode, the capacity must be based on testing, and not calculation; either
standard pre-qualified designs should be used (see FEMA 350; FEMA 2000c) or special testing of at least
two specimens carried out for non-standard designs.

Achievement of these rotational capacities is highly dependent on the connection

design.

COLUMNS:

Columns are generally designed to be protected against yielding and therefore do not have to conform to
the same compactness requirements referred to above for beams. The exception is fixed column
bases; here, the seismic compactness rules must apply because the columns are ‘dissipative’. Capacity
design procedures are used to ensure adequate flexural strength. It might be thought they would also be
suitable to set design axial loads in columns, to prevent highly undesirable axial buckling failure. In
principle, this can be done by adding the axial loads generated by simultaneous yielding of all beams to
the gravity loads. However, this simple addition would result in excessive conservatism, in the same way
as it would for columns in braced frames . This is because it is unlikely that all the beams will yield
simultaneously. Generally, codes specify that the columns are designed for the forces derived from the
seismic analysis, increased by a simple factor. In Eurocode 8, the factor equals 1.375 . Here, is the
minimum ratio of resistance moment to design moment at plastic hinge positions in the beams.
Since the resistance moment must not be less than the design moment, is always at least 1. Where the
beams are all sized considerably in excess of the minimum requirement, the structure will start to yield at
a lateral force considerably greater than that effectively assumed in the analysis. Therefore, the column
forces will also be greater than predicted by the analysis. Factoring the column forces by 1.375
therefore allows for this. The factor is set at 1.375 rather than to allow for strain hardening in the beam
plastic hinges, and to provide some degree of additional reserve of strength.

Column splices need to be designed to transmit safely the design axial force in the column, calculated as
above, together with the column bending moment at the splice position. An elastic analysis is a potentially
unsafe way of predicting the latter, both because the beams may be stronger than required by the
analysis, and so yield at higher loads, and also because the point of contraflexure in the column
under inelastic dynamic loading tends to be poorly predicted by an elastic analysis.

At the extreme, if the splice were placed at the point of contraflexure (zero moment) predicted by an
elastic analysis, and were designed only for axial load, it could fail if the point of contraflexure shifts.
Eurocode 8 has no specific requirement to ensure the safe design of column splices, but AISC requires
that splices in special moment frames should be designed to develop the expected flexural strength of
the smaller of the two columns being connected.

T.RangaRajan.