Evaluation of the connection rigidity on the vertical shear distribution at beam section in steel I shaped beams according to the beam span length

This paper evaluates the effect of I-shaped beams connection rigidity with different span length on vertical force and shear stress distribution in beam flanges and web at connection section in comparison with classical theory of stress distribution. Accordingly, 72 models with different connection rigidity under concentrated static load in mid span have been made for doing parametric study in ANSYS Workbench finite element software. The linear static analysis was done on all constructed models. Variable parameters in these research for parametric study include of connection rigidity in the case of change in the end plate thickness (from 7 to 30 mm), beam span length, restraint or no restraint between beam web and flange and the presence or absence of Poisson’s effects. Performed studies have shown that that vertical shear stress distribution in beam to column connection section with moment connection differs a lot from what is stated in mechanics of materials equations. Practically the available equations in regulations which state that web receives the entire vertical shear and ignore the contribution of flanges are not reliable. Studies also showed that the contribution of the flanges and web at connecting section from vertical shear force strongly affected by the connection rigidity and the beam span length. On the other side, the results express this fact that among desired parameters the existence of restraint between flanges and web in all models is the most important parameter in the differences between the classical and real results and elimination of this parameter in structures can be considered as an idea to improve the performance of the modern connections.