A proposal for improving the elastic behaviour of dogbone

The Reduced Beam Section (RBS) connections are one of the prequalified connections approved by international standards and adopted to improve the seismic behaviour of steel Moment Resisting Frames (MRF) also protecting the joint between beams and columns. This goal is reached by locally reducing the resistance of a selected portion of the beam element by suitably trimming the flanges, to promote in that portion the onset of plastic deformations. In the framework of RBS, the most important typology proposed is the so-called dogbone (DB) connections that are widely diffused in seismic engineering. The essential advantages of DB are related to the protection of the welded cross section between…