NON LINEAR BEHAVIOR OF SHEAR LUGS AND STEEL BUILDINGS

RESPONSE

Aguirre Carlos
Department of Civil Engineering, Universidad Santa María, Chile.
[email protected]

ABSTRACT

Shear Lugs are frequently used in seismic areas where large lateral forces
have to be transferred to the foundations. It is normally assumed that there
are two controlling limits states for a shear lug: the bearing strength of con-
crete and the flexural yielding strength of the steel. Tests results performed
during the last three years at Santa Maria University’s Laboratory show
that the steel failure normally occur in shear yielding and this failure mode
is more ductile than concrete bearing failure. In this paper, some typical
steel building subjected to selected ground motion records was studied. It
was found that ductile shear lugs have a slight isolation effect but it has no
influence in the global performance of the buildings.

1. INTRODUCTION

Shear lugs are frequently used when large lateral forces occur, especially in
structures built in seismic areas. Several types of steel shapes can be used as shear
lugs; Fig. 1 illustrates a Cross type shear lug, it has to provide strength in any direction
of the horizontal loads. Present codes design is based on methodologies coming from
the engineering experience and some basic theoretical principles. There are only a few
studies related to shear lugs design. This research work is a continuation of a research
program developed at Santa Maria University. The first part of this program included
the experimental testing of different type of shear lugs cross sections (Aguirre C and
Palma I, 2009). The geometry of
tested specimens is shown in Table 1,
some of them were selected to
produce failure in the steel and some
others to produce the concrete failure.
Fig.1 shows a detail of the cross type
shear lug.

Fig. 1 – Cross Type Shear Lug

 The first group of specimens (N° 1 up
to N° 12) are cross steel shapes, the second Table 1 - Specimens Geometry
group (N°13 up to N°20) are W steel shapes
with the load applied on the strong axis, the 1.- Cross type shear lug
third group (N°21 up to N°26) are W shapes
Test W H t G
too but the load is applied on the weak axis Nº (mm) (mm) (mm) (mm)
and finally Specimens N°10, 11 and 12 were 1 100 100 5 8
extra samples, made with higher grout 2 100 75 5 8
thicknesses, to evaluate the influence of the 3 100 50 5 8
grout thicknesses on the results. The failure 4 100 100 8 11
of a shear lug can happen either in the steel 5 100 75 8 11
lug or in the surrounding concrete. Tests 6 100 100 12 15
results demonstrate that the steel failure is 7 100 75 12 15
shear yielding type and concrete failure is 8 100 50 12 15
bearing type, Fig. 2 shows one of the 9 100 100 19 20
samples tested. In a difference with the 10 140 140 5 40
current design practice based on AISC N° 1 11 140 140 8 40
Design Guide (2010), the testing program 12 140 140 12 40
demonstrated that the steel failure is normally 2.- W type shear lug-Strong Axis
a shear yielding type. The flexural yielding
Test W H S t G
steel failure never occurs. Nº (mm) (mm) (mm) (mm) (mm)
13 100 100 90 5 15
14 100 50 90 5 15
15 100 75 225 3 15
16 100 75 75 3 15
17 100 75 75 19 15
18 100 75 225 19 15
19 150 130 130 3 15
20 150 130 130 6 15
21 100 100 90 5 15
22 100 50 90 5 15
23 100 75 75 3 15
24 100 75 150 19 15
3.- W type shear lug-Weak Axis
Test W H S t G
Fig. 2 – Cross type shear lug Nº (mm) (mm) (mm) (mm) (mm)
25 100 75 75 19 15
26 100 100 90 19 15
The dotted red line on the picture
emphasizes the shape of a typical shear 4.- O type shear lug
deflection, which normally happens in short Test D H t G
members. It suggests that shear lug strength Nº (mm) (mm) (mm) (mm)
can be obtained by using the shear capacity 29 114.3 100 6.02 15
of the steel shape, expressed by equation (1). 30 114.3 75 6.02 15

Vsteel = 0.6⋅Fy·Ashear (1)

 2. DESIGN APROACH

Shear Lug Design use to be done by applying either AISC N° 1 Design Guide
(2010) or ACI 349-01 Code (2001), both of them assume two possible controlling limit
states:

ƒ Bearing of Concrete
ƒ Flexural Yielding of the Steel

AISC Steel Design Guide N°1, accepts both ASD and LRFD design methods.
When ASD design method is used, it is assumed for the bearing stress of concrete a
safe value of 0.35·f’c (unconfined concrete). For LRFD design method a 0.85·ϕc·f`c is
assumed as a nominal bearing stress. The dimensions of shear lugs must provide
enough bearing area between the shear lug and concrete to fulfil the concrete limit state
(without considering the grout), as it is shown on Table 1. The shear lug is assumed a
steel plate behaving as a cantilever beam. The design is based on the maximum
moment (Mlg) at the base. The shear lug thickness is obtained considering the steel
plate moment strength, according to Table 2 and figure 2.

Table 1 - Required bearing area Table 2 - Shear lug thickness.

DESIGN METHOD DESIGN METHOD

ASD LRFD ASD LRFD

Figure 2 - Load and deflection of the Shear lug

 ACI 349-01 Code states that design compression stress, either for concrete or
grout, shall not exceed 1.3⋅φ⋅f’c (LRFD method), and φ reduction is 0.70. A comparison
of ACI and AISC nominal stress is shown in Table 3. It can be seen that ACI nominal
stress is 78% larger than AISC nominal stress, that means ACI proposal for the
concrete bearing pressure is less conservative than AISC-Guide N°1. In spite of this
approach ACI produces safe designs of the lugs. It seems that there is no reason for a
more conservative approach.

Table 3 - ACI-349 and AISC-Guide N°1 comparison

Nominal stress (LRFD) Nominal stress (LRFD)
ACI 349-01 Guide N°1, AISC
σnom=1.3·φ·f’c=0.91·f’c σnom=0.85·ϕc·f’c=0.51·f’c

Both approaches are based on Rotz and Reifschneider (1989) research work,
who studied the behavior of the plates under a combination of shear and axial load, in
tension and compression. The results of their tests presented a prime and first failure
type denominated “bearing mode”, related to concrete compression bearing capacity.
The “bearing mode” is associated to the formation of shallow fracture plane on the top
surface of the specimen, a fast increase of horizontal and vertical displacement, and a
fast reduction of the shear load strength. From this study, expression (2) for the shear
capacity was proposed.

Vconcrete=Kb f´c Alg + Kc (Py - Pa) (2)

The first term of the equation is the typical compression strength of concrete; the
second term is the concrete confinement effect on the base plate produced by the
anchor bolts, it increases the strength capacity. Kb and Kc are parameters empirically
obtained.

In order to understand the

predominant failure mode of the
steel, the chart on Figure 3 was
prepared. It is a comparison of
Rotz tests results and the
calculated strengths of the shear
lug. Vreal is the test result, Vbend
was determined assuming the lug
behaves as a cantilever beam
clamped at the base plate, who
yield in bending. Vshear was
obtained assuming a shear
Figure 3: Rotz tests results
yielding failure (Equation 1). It can
be seen that the steel flexural yielding was the smallest strength in most of the cases
(92%), which means that the shear lugs should have been failed into this first mode. But
the failure mode reported by the authors is the bearing of concrete, which according to
Fig. 3 exhibit a larger strength than the flexural yielding mode in almost all of the tests.
In other words concrete bearing was the typical failure mode in spite of its strength is
larger than the flexural steel yielding strength. On the other hand, the shear steel
yielding mode has the highest strength; such a result agrees well with Rotz’s tests
failures in concrete bearing.

Fig. 4 is a comparison of concrete and steel failure modes obtained from tests
results. It can be seen the higher ductility level of shear yielding of the steel compare to
the concrete bearing failure mode. From the standpoint of the earthquake engineering
larger ductilities are advantageous, but the difficulty to replace a shear lug after a
severe earthquake, have to be considered in any design approach.

Fig. 4. Comparison of typical steel shear yielding failure

and concrete bearing failure for cross section

3. NON LINEAR BUILDING ANALYSIS

In order to study the influence of the shear lug ductility in the seismic behaviour
of buildings, a set of steel frame buildings was chosen and analyzed under the action of
some selected ground motion records occurred during the last 30 years. The goal was
to determine whether the shear lug ductility reduces or increases the structural damage
of the buildings and to explore the possibility of using the lug properties to get safer and
more economic structures.

Figure 5 shows a sketch of a typical building, the number of stories selected was
4, 8, 12 and 16; the plan is the same for all of them. The ground motions records
selected are presented in Table 4. The building analyses were performed under two
assumptions: (1) the columns are fixed to the base and (2) the columns are connected
to the base through a non linear shear lug. The non linear properties were obtained
from the experimental tests results (Palma, I., 2008).

3
3
3
4.5

7.32 7.32 7.32 7.32

(a) Elevation

1 2 3 4 5

7.32

7.32

7.32

D
7.32 7.32 7.32 7.32

(b) Plan

Figure 5 – Plan and Elevation of the selected buildings

Shear lug design was performed according two approaches: (1) AISC Design
Guide N° 1 (AISC, 2010) assuming that the limit state that for the lug design is the
yielding in flexure and (2) according to Palma, I (2008) proposal, assuming that the limit
state is shear yielding. In order to avoid the concrete bearing failure, a larger concrete
strength was provided. Table 5 shows the Design Base Shear for all the buildings and
the geometric properties of the shear lugs according to both design approaches. It can
be seen that the first approach produces stronger shear lugs.

Table 4 – Ground Motion Records

Duration Richter Amax
Earthquake Record
(s) Magnitude (g)
Chile [03-03-1985] Viña 60 7,8 0,36
Chile [03-03-1985] Llolleo 60 7,8 0,71
México [19-09-1985] SCT 60 8,1 0,17
U.S.A [17-01-1994] Northridge 60 6,8 0,84
Japan [17-01-1995] Kobe 60 6,9 0,84
Chile [27-02-2010] Concepcion 60 8,8 0,48

Table 5 – Design Parameters

Building Base LIMIT STATE CRITERIA FOR SHEAR LUG DESIGN

Height Shear Flexural Yielding Shear Yielding
Stories Q [kN] W H t W H t
[cm] [cm] [cm] [cm] [cm] [cm]
4 1804 15 9 2 20 17 0,5
8 1557 15 8 2 18 16 0,5
12 2199 15 10 2 24 20 0,5
16 2950 15 12 2 22 21 0,8

Time history analyses of the buildings were performed by using the elasto-plastic
hysteresis model included in Ruaumoko program. Shear lugs were modelled by
considering elasto-plastic shear elements at the base of the columns, the properties
were obtained from the experimental results Palma, I (2008). Fig. 6 shows some
characteristic curves of cross type shear lugs.

4. RESULTS

In order to understand the influence of the shear lug ductility in the building
behavior, the amount of plastic hinges formed under both kind of the column base
conditions was selected as a measure of the building damage. The comparison is
shown on Table 6, it can be seen some reduction of the number of hinges when ductile
shear lugs are used, with the exception of Kobe and Mexico earthquakes. Table 7
shows the maximum demanded member ductility in every building. In some cases can
be observed a slight isolating effect and sometimes a sort of a slight increase in the
member ductility demands, but this is a minor effect and in some cases there is no
effect.

Table 6 – Amount of Plastic hinges formed depending on the base type

Base Kobe Llolleo Méxic North. Viña Conc.

Stories o
Support 1995 1985 1994 1985 2010
1985

Fixed 37 29 0 37 23 27
4
Ductile 37 21 0 31 5 6
Fixed 69 53 0 69 48 61
8
Ductile 69 37 0 69 34 59
Fixed 93 84 60 77 46 69
12
Ductile 93 73 52 77 41 68
Fixed 123 105 106 113 15 87
16
Ductile 123 105 106 113 14 86
 Table 7 – Ductility demand at the most demanded member in each building

Base Kobe Llolleo México North. Viña Conc.

Stories
Support 1995 1985 1985 1994 1985 2010

Fixed 10 3,6 1 5 3,1 3

4
Ductile 9,4 2,6 1 4,6 2,4 2,4
Fixed 5,4 1,7 1 7 1,5 3,7
8
Ductile 4,5 1,7 1 7 1,4 3,4
Fixed 4,3 2,8 4,2 7,7 1,7 2
12
Ductile 4,7 2,8 4,8 8,2 1,6 2,6
Fixed 6,5 3,3 9,7 9,5 1,2 2,7
16
Ductile 7,6 3,8 9,6 9,4 1,2 3,2

Table 8 shows the ductility demands to the shear lugs. When the shear lug remains in
the elastic zone the demanded ductility is 1 and when the ductility demand exceeds 14
it was considered a shear lug failure.

Table 8 – Demanded ductilities at shear lugs

Stories Kobe Llolleo México North. Viña Conc.

1995 1985 1985 1994 1985 2010

4 Failure Failure 1 Failure Failure Failure

8 Failure Failure Failure Failure Failure Failure
12 Failure Failure Failure Failure 9,6 Failure
16 Failure 9,8 Failure Failure 3,8 8,5

It can be seen that ductile shear lugs often fail and even though it does not mean
a building collapse it’s necessary to replace the shear lug, which is expensive and
difficult. The shear lug designed according to AISC Design Guide N° 1 does not require
ductility capacity, however those shear lugs has no strength capacity considerations in
their design and they could fail in a brittle fashion.

5. CONCLUDING REMARKS

1. Shear lugs should be designed to fail after the failure of the structure in order to
avoid the necessity to be replaced because the replacing is difficult and expensive.
2. In the event of a shear lug failure, it is better to have the steel failure first than the
concrete failure, which is normally a brittle failure mode.
3. In order to guarantee a ductile steel failure, shear lug design should include capacity
considerations to avoid a premature steel failure. In that sense the provided concrete
strength should be larger than steel strength.
4. The steel failure mode is a typical shear yielding failure. Tests show that flexural
yielding mode did not happen. As a consequence, shear steel yielding should be the
controlling limit state for the steel lug design.
5. The more flexible the shear lug the higher is the isolation effect, however flexible
shear lugs fails and the replacement is difficult and expensive.
6. The influence of shear lug ductility in the building behavior depends of the ground
motion characteristics, the building and shear lugs structural properties. It produces
a reduction of the earthquake forces but, in practice, it does not change substantially
the damage of the structure.

REFERENCES

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