Assessment of Seismic Performance of Eccentrically Braced Frames (EBF) by Fragility Curves

Studies have been shown that conventional concentrically braced frames have undesirablity seismic performance since satisfy the displacement-controlled conditions in moment resistant frames are difficult. Then in the decades of 1970, researchers developed a system that had a good performance in strength and stiffness and in lateral displacement-controlled conditions either, the reason for this can be expressed that eccentrically braced frame (EBF) link acts as a fuse. Considering the limited research conducted in the field of investigating the seismic performance of eccentrically braced systems under strong ground motions by powerful dynamic nonlinear analyses, as well as knowing as much as possible the seismic behavior of these types of frames and choosing a suitable system to deal with seismic forces, the necessity of this research was felt. Therefore, in this paper, the seismic performance of 5, 10, and 15-story eccentrically braced frames with link beams with different types of performance in the ranges of shear, shear-flexural, and flexural performances has been investigated using incremental dynamic analyses (IDAs) under near-field ground motions. The results showed that, the performance of EBFs with Shear link in collapse prevention (CP) performance level are more desirable than EBFs with shear-flexural link and also performance of EBFs with shear-flexural link are more desirable than EBFs with Flexural link.