CONTRIBUTING EFFECT OF CLADDING PANELS IN THE SEISMIC DESIGN OF MR STEEL FRAMES

摘要

Current paper is dealing with the influence of light-weight cladding panels on the seismic design of multistorey steel moment resisting (MR) frames. To this purpose, the possibility to profit of the contributing effect of shear walls on the serviceability limit state of the structure is analysed. In particular, a new design procedure is stated and discussed. It is essentially based on the separation between strength and drift requirements. Therefore, the stiffening diaphragm action provided by cladding panels is taken into account in order to increase the lateral stiffness of the bare frame, once the latter has been designed according to resistance and ductility requirements only. In the study, which is referred to three different structural typologies, namely two-, five- and seven-storey frames, different strategies to chose cladding panels characteristics are considered. In general, obtained results show that the proposed procedure leads to more rational and economic solutions, allowing for an important reduction of structural member sizes. Besides, it is noticed that obtained requirements for cladding panels in terms of both strength and stiffness are never prohibitive, they being in the same range of ones provided by commercial products.