The Resiliency of Steel Moment-Resisting Frame Structures Against Earthquake: The FUTURE Project

The article presents the main experimental findings of the FUTURE project that was funded in the framework of the H2020-INFRAIA SERA program. Shake table tests of four steel mockups were carried out. The tested mockups were two-story, single-bay moment frames equipped with replaceable dissipative elements at the beam-to-column joints and column bases. Three mockups were tested varying the type of prequalified beam-to-column joints (i.e., Reduced Beam Section, Extended Stiffened End-Plate, and Haunched end-plate). All specimens were equipped with Reduced Column Sections (RCS) at the column bases. One mockup integrated ductile infill wall and suspended ceiling to explore their effects on the structural performance. Each mockup underwent more than thirty incremental near-field (NF) ground motions arranged also to simulate foreshock-mainshock-aftershock scenarios. The study reveals that despite the severity of the excitation regimes, all mockups exhibited satisfactory performance, confirming the effectiveness of the design criteria. Besides, the type of beam-to-column joints significantly affects the behavior of SMRFs in terms of the maximum and residual inter-story drift ratios. It is also shown that while the ceiling system remained almost intact during the excitations, the infill walls experienced higher accelerations than the expected values and damage due to Wall-Frame Interaction.