State-of-the-art review on the design of beam-to-column connections for pultruded frames

A review and commentary is presented on the research to understand and develop practical beam-to-column connections for pultruded frames. Experimental moment-rotation curves for isolated connections are presented and their properties used in a commentary on frame design. Current design recommendations for pinned connections are given, with reasons why research is still necessary to understand their complete structural behaviour, and that of practical semi-rigid connections. The paper introduces a new analytical method to predict the static behaviour of linear elastic plane frames having real connections, second-order deflections and shear deformable members. The beam-line method and the frame analysis are used to show the potential benefits of treating frame design as semi-rigid. Results using these analytical models are shown to provide useful information in our quest to optimize the performance of semi-rigid connections and frames. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd