Design for Local Member Shear at Brace and Diagonal-Member Connections: Full-Height and Chevron Gussets

Abstract

Large local member shear forces develop in beams in chevron-braced frames due to the delivery of brace forces to beam flanges, which are at a distance from the beam centerline (Fortney and Thornton, 2015, 2017; Hadad and Fortney, 2020). Using the “lower bound theorem” (Thornton, 1984), Sabelli and Arber (2017) developed design methods to address this local member shear by optimizing the internal stress distribution and thus maximizing the resistance utilized in design. This paper further develops those design methods for chevron beams and extends them to gusset connections at columns.