Fracture Modeling of Rectangular Hollow Section Steel Braces

Steel braced frames are widely used in all regions of the U.S. including those with high levels of seismicity. Rectangular hollow sections (RHS) are popular because of good section properties and ease of construction. A refined beam model has been developed which is efficient for use in finite element models of buildings. It accounts for local buckling and fracture in the brace and is shown to have good accuracy for nonlinear seismic analyses.