Creep Behavior of Flush Endplate Connections at Elevated Temperatures Due to Fire

Abstract

This paper highlights some preliminary results of a computational study investigating the effect of thermal creep of structural steel on the behavior of steel beam-column connections subjected to elevated temperatures due to fire. Through a series of finite element simulations that were partly verified against experimental data, a practical methodology was developed to investigate the time-dependent nature of the behavior of flush endplate beam-column connections at elevated temperatures. In this methodology, time effects on the strength and rotational capacity of flush endplate connections are explicitly presented in the form of isochronous force-rotation curves. The isochronous representation provides a possible framework for including creep effects in predicting the response of structural steel connections to fire.