Design for robustness of a pilot building equipped with dissipative FREE from DAMage steel connections

Recent research initiative aimed at reducing the structural damage and its inherent economic consequences in steel and steel-concrete composite structures after severe earthquakes led to the development of FREE from DAMage (FREEDAM) beam-to-column connections. The practical applicability and the benefits of using these connections for structures in seismic areas are currently demonstrated within an ongoing RFCS pilot project to be built on the campus of the University of Salerno. Amongst the different structural requirements, Eurocodes nowadays require providing the structures with an appropriate robustness when subjected to identified or unidentified accidental events by ensuring that the undergone damages are not disproportionate to the initiating cause. This paper presents the design for robustness of the pilot building. The results indicate that the loss of a column at the base floor induces the development of significant catenary action in the beams bridging over the lost column. The structural performance under the column loss scenario is primarily governed by the behaviour of beam-to-column joints subsequently identified as critical zones. The full-range behaviour of the FREEDAM joints was investigated through complex numerical simulations which allowed validating a simplified component-based spring model that can be adopted for the regular design of structures adopting this joint typology.