Seismic design of reduced beam section steel moment connections with bolted web attachment

Recent test results on reduced beam section (RBS) steel moment connections showed that specimens with a bolted web connection tend to perform poorly due to premature brittle fracture of the beam flange at the weld access hole. The measured strain data appeared to indicate that a higher incidence of base metal fracture in bolted web specimens is related, at least in part, to the increased demand on the beam flanges due to the web bolt slippage and the actual load transfer mechanism which is significantly different from that usually assumed in connection design. In this paper, the practice of providing web bolts uniformly along the beam depth was brought into question. A new seismic design procedure, which is more consistent with the actual load path identified from analytical and experimental studies, is proposed. A pilot test specimen designed by following the proposed procedure exhibited sufficient cyclic connection rotation capacity without fracture.