Date of Award

Spring 2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Civil Engineering

First Advisor

Foley, Christopher M.

Abstract

Cold-formed steel is emerging as an alternative material in the building industry to hot-rolled steel for smaller buildings and indoor structures also called mezzanines. Cyclic testing of a full-scale mezzanine structures composed of cold-formed structural channel beams connected to hollow structural steel (HSS) columns cap plates using wedge expansion anchors at the base plate to generate rotation restraint, is performed in this research. The characteristics of the structure will be explained by displaying full experimental results of structural testing. Unfortunately, limited experimental data outlining the behavior of these structures is available and design criteria is very limited. Thus, there is a need to conduct reliable experimental tests to understand fundamental behavioral mechanisms for migration into effective design criteria. A full analysis to produce moment-rotations curves at the column base plate will be used to study their structural behavior. Loads are imposed using cyclic lateral displacements. HSS base plate connection behavior is not fully understood and makes use of fixed base HSS columns in seismic regions difficult to quantify. Hysteretic models of the entire structure will be presented for further research of nonlinear response of frame structures.

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