Seismic Behavior of Concentrically Braced Steel Frames with Out-of-Plane Offset Irregularity

Braced steel frames are sometimes designed with out-of-plane shifted bracing members on the first story due to architectural or functional considerations. Such frames are classified and designated as frames having the Type-4 horizontal structural irregularity entitled “frames with out-of-plane offset irregularity” as per theMinimum Design Loads for Building and Other Structures(ASCE 7-10). The purpose of this study is to investigate the nonlinear seismic behavior of ordinary steel concentrically braced frames with out-of-plane offset irregularity and evaluate their seismic design parameters. To this end, two 3-story and 6-story three-dimensional ordinary concentrically braced frames (OCBFs) with and without out-of-plane offset of one of the vertical elements on the first story were considered (i.e. irregular and regular configurations). The seismic design parameters considered in this study includes: frame overall overstrength factor, column overstrength factor and the inelastic dynamic inter-story drift demands. Nonlinear time-history dynamic analysis of the frames showed that overall overstrength factor of the low- and mid-rise irregular frames studied in this research is lower than that of the regular ones. Moreover, it was found that theSeismic Provisionsprescribed overstrength factor (i.e. Ωo=2.0) to amplify columns axial seismic forces in OCBFs is not conservative for the studied regular frames’ columns as well as the columns in the vicinity of the shifted bracing members on the first story of the irregular frames. Also, it was shown that the studied low- and mid-rise regular and irregular concentrically braced frames experience greater inter-story drift demands than predicted by the amplified elastic analysis proposed in the codes.