Experimental study and numerical analyses on seismic behaviors of staggered-truss system under low cyclic loading

An experimental investigation on the behavior of an 8-storey steel staggered-truss system with a 18-scaled model under reversed low cyclic loading is presented in this paper. In the experiment, the hysteretic curves, skeleton curve as well as other related deformations are measured. And based on the test results, some indices of seismic behaviors of the system, such as yield load, deformation, ductility, energy dissipation, strength, and rigidity degeneration, are analyzed. However, due to the diversity of parameters of the steel staggered-truss system and the unique features of the tested model, the experimental study is not comprehensive enough. Therefore, an analytical investigation based on the finite element (FE) models using the ANSYS software is also presented. The FE models, in which both the material and geometric nonlinearity is considered, are validated using the experimental results. Then the parameters, such as the structural height and height–width ratio, truss type, arrangement of the ground floor trusses, truss span–depth ratio and open-web panel length, are varied, and their influences on seismic behaviors of the system are studied by the verified FE method. Based on the experimental and FE analytical results, some suggestions are presented for design of staggered-truss system.