Experimental Study on the Behavior of Header End - Plate Connections under Cyclic Loading

This paper presents the results from an experimental study on the actual behavior of header end-plate connections. To better understand the hysteretic behavior of these connections in terms of the stiffness and the strength, sixteen specimens were considered and subjected to cyclic loads. The effect of some parameters such as thickness of the header end-plate, depth of the connection and the number of bolt rows on the behavior of header end-plate connections has been investigated by the help of experimental tests and finite element (FE) analyses. The moment-rotation relations of the connections governed by three parameters such as initial stiffness, moment capacity and rotation capacity were obtained. Results revealed that the moment capacity increases with the increase in end-plate thickness and depth of connection. However, for the equal connection depth, increasing the number of bolt rows has not influenced the connection behavior in any noticeable way.