An experimental study of new friction-slip connection for moment-frames with continuous beams

This paper presents an experimental, and a brief numerical study of a new configuration for friction-slip con-nections in moment frames with continuous beams. A specimen with a bolted connection was tested and sub-jected to a cyclic displacement protocol with three different bolt pretension loads. The results demonstrated that the connection worked as a rigid connection, and had an acceptable friction-slip behavior, and no structural damage was observed in the specimen after each test. Besides, increasing the bolt pretension loads leads to more energy dissipation based on the friction performance of the connection. The friction between the washers and the plate with slotted holes increases the strength of the specimen and causes deviations in the hysteretic response from the expected conventional frictional hysteresis response; while the analytical results show that by considering friction, only between the connection plates (the current theoretical approach), there would be no increase in load levels.