Panel zone is one of the most important elements for transferring the lateral load to other elements in Steel Moment Resistant Frames. To some extent, this element through its suitable ductile behavior with beams, that themselves have been known as ductile elements, can increase the overall ductility of SMRF. The suitable design procedure for this element and details, can highly affect the performance of SMRF. Present research, specially on panel zone with unequal beam depth on two sides of panel zone and their effect on panel zone when monotonic load acting on SMRF is limited. Therefore, main aim of this paper is considering ductility of panel zone individually with unequal beams depth on two sides.
The research method is based on verifying the analytical model, built in ANSYS Finite Element Software, with experimental model in laboratory test. This verification permits us to make different models with variety of geometric parameters of Panel Zone (i.e. depth of beams and thickness of column flange).Then the partial ductility ratio that is driven from backbone curve of cyclic behavior of panel zone used for comparing to presence standard rehabilitation code (fema274).
The obtained results from this research in all of geometric cases will not demonstrate constant ductility ratio as stated in standard rehabilitation code (fema274). Current partial ductility ratio in standard rehabilitation code (fema274) will be overestimated. When the depth of one of the two beams is shallower than the other, the partial ductility ratio of panel zone will decrease .In case of exterior columns (which are connected to only one beam) this ratio will be minimum and in a case of interior column with equal or approximately equal beams depth this ratio will be maximum.
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