Ground Motions and Structures - Earthquake Engineering for Structural Design - page 332

332 Earthquake Engineering for Structural Design

This remark is valuable also for the joints of steel structures; even the much damaged
connections present an important residual resistance (Fig. 8.32). This aspect is proved
by the observation that during strong earthquakes many masonry and concrete
structures collapse by total failure, when the steel structures just present large damage
without total failure (see damaged buildings during the Northridge and Kobe
earthquakes). The only case of total collapse of a steel structure was the Pino Suarez
building (1985 Mexico City), due to the fact that the residual resistance could not be
accounted for by the premature rupture of column welding.
The second factor influencing the residual resistance is the structural configuration .
The structural robustness is related to the progressive collapse and one of the most

Moment

Rotation
Figure 8.32 Modeling of steel fractured joint (after Kim et al, 2006)