Finite Element Analysis On Steel Frame With Retaining Structure

Steel residential building has become the current trend of homebuilding in our country for its enormous merits, such as the light dead-weight, easily installing, short construction cycle, excellent anti- earthquake property, quickly returns on investment, light environmental contamination etc. As for steel residential building, the selection of the retaining structure is the key technique of application and dissemination. There is few consideration of the masonry infill panel's contributions to the lateral resistance of steel frame, actually, the load bearing of the masonry-infilled steel frame is far from the bare frame for the interaction between the panel and the frame. Therefore, anglicizing the mutual interaction of integrants, establishing the simple computing model of the retaining structure, grasping the contribution of the retaining structure to the lateral resistance property and the improvement of anti- earthquake property of steel frame is very important to the development of the steel residential building.The experimental research for sandwich panel infill steel frame is one subject of 2001'Key Research Subject of China Ministry of Construction, grant No. 01-2-085. There are three aspects as below on the problems of this subject:1. The material property of cavity sandwich panel infill specimen and two l:2-scale steel frame specimens of their behavior under cycle loading are tested. The compressive strength and shear strength of cavity sandwich panel infill are determined. The properties of cavity sandwich panel infill steel frame, such as hysteretic characteristics, stiffness, ductility, failure models and characteristic of dissipation of energy are gained in the test and compared with ordinary steel frame as well.2. Based on the experimental research, using the static and nonlinear analytic function of finite element analysis software-ANSYS, one-bay-two-story and two-bay-two-story masonry-infilled steel frames are analyzed. The load-deflection relation curve, the stiffness degradation curve, the stress contours of the frames and the infill panels of the model under yield load and ultimate load are obtained andcompare with the experimental ones.3. A three-strut model is used to replace the infill panel, three-strut simple computing model for masonry-infilled steel frame is established. The numerical analysis of software ANASYS shows that, the outcomes not only checking the practicability of the simple computing method, but also proving once more that the analytical technique can efficiently emulate the experimental research with coincidental results, even for accomplishing the incapable experiments due to the limit of equipment or fabrication of specimens. Revealing and simulating the experimental phenomena.Some problems about this research worth to be studied afterward are put up in the end of the paper.