Stability of non-sway steel frames with semi-rigid connections

Conventional analysis of steel frames assumes either perfectly rigid or pinned connections.
he rigidity of most connections behaves, in fact, soinewhat between these two extremes.
Therefore incorporating the effect of connection flexibility into the analysis and design
procedure of the frame becomes necessary.
Buckling of a column is fundamental to the design of load bearing structures mainly when
the analysis of such frames takes into account the effect of the connection ílexibility.
The objective of this work is to present a simplified approach for the evaluation of the
elastic buckling load for steel frames with semi-rigid joints. To this end, a simple model that
takes into account the effect of beam-column joint flexibility in the analysis of steel frames is
proposed and a corresponding stiffiiess matrix element is presented. The developed model has
been verified to be valid through an illustrative example found in the literature; numerical
results are provided to illustrate the accuracy of the results.