Executive Summary : | Objective: Performance evaluation of exterior large fuse link beam-column joint (beam depth upto 800mm) sub-assemblage by using developed fuse link under monotonic and pseudo static reverse cyclic loading; Performance assessment of developed fuse link connection in moment frames through full-scale experimental invsetigations under lateral loading; Development of design guidelines for seismic resilient steel moment frames based on the above studies Summary: This research proposal is related to seismic resilient structural systems, which not only ensure occupants safety, but also enable easy retrofitting after the severe earthquake. During the past severe earthquakes, it is understood that the prevailing capacity based seismic resistant design guidelines served its intended purposes to a great extent. It ensured the occupants safety during strong earthquakes. However, post-earthquake issues such as repair and rehabilitation of damaged buildings, etc. are not addressed adequately. Hence, after severe earthquake many questions such as what is the level of damage in structural system, how to repair and rehabilitate, how to identify the damage, etc. are difficult to answer with the existing systems. It necessitates new structural system that ensures safety of occupants, at the same time confining the inelastic damage within the replaceable elements, which can be easily handled. Such replaceable elements should offer adequate strength and stiffness and should also be capable of dissipating the seismic energy without significant strength degradation, where high-energy absorbing material and/or configuration play a major role. In the recent research works, dissipative replaceable elements were introduced in beams away from existing beam-column connection (Balut & Gioncu, 2003; Shen et al., 2010; Castiglioni et al., 2012), which increase the cost, time and fabrication works. Instead, dissipative fuse link connection would be an excellent alternative (Khonsari et al., 2008; Oh et al., 2009; Latour et al., 2011; Koken & Koroglu, 2013), which not only enable easy repair work, but also not increasing the initial construction cost. In line with this, a novel dissipative fuse link beam-column connection has been developed and its intended behavior was successfully demonstrated (In-house R&D project) through numerical and experimental investigations on full-scale exterior beam-column joint sub-assemblage for mid-range beam sections up to 400mm beam depth according to AISC 341-16. The developed connection is suitable to use in low-to-medium rise moment frame buildings, which require the depth of beam sections in the range of about 300 to 800mm. In general, the increase in depth of beam increases the ductility demand of beam-column connections. Hence, it is necessary to demonstrate the behavior of fuse link connection with necessary modifications for larger beam sections through experimental investigations. In the present project, numerical/experimental investigations will be carried out on (i) fuse link connection with necessary modifications for larger beam sections and (ii) full-scale moment frames with developed fuse link connections under lateral loading. Based on the investigations, the fuse link connection will be qualified for developing seismic resilient steel moment frames for low-to-medium rise buildings |