| Summary: | The most important aspects of a structure when it has to be designed against seismic
actions are: resistance capacity, ductility capacity and the amount of energy dissipated during the seismic excitation. The combination of steel and concrete, in composite elements, leads to an improved behaviour due to the increment in the stiffness and the resistance of the main sections, while at the same time, the ductile behaviour of composite structures is similar to the one exhibited by steel structures. In the last few years composite structures have become very popular in the building industry; however their use in seismic zones is reduced, due to the lack of knowledge about their behaviour against seismic actions. The main focus of this dissertation is to describe the behaviour of a double sided extended end plate composite joint. Several tests of full scale substructures have been performed to evaluate the main properties of this proposed joint. The data collected from the test is used to simplify the behaviour of the joint in a model of two rotational springs that is used to perform seismic simulations. Three frames of different heights and spans are analysed. For each frame and each type of slabs two pushover analysis are performed to evaluate the ultimate capacity of the frame. Incremental dynamic analyses are also performed to evaluate the seismic properties of each frame with three different accelerograms matching three types of elastic response spectra. The data from the simulations is used to evaluate the seismic behaviour, the characteristics of this type of joint when applied to moment resisting frames, and to ensure the improved behaviour of this structural typology under seismic actions.
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