Mechanical Properties and Influence Factors of Ordinary Shear Links

The current specification requires the same limiting values of inelastic rotation and the overstrength factor for shear links with a length ratio less than 1.6. However, recent studies have shown that the mechanical properties of ordinary shear links with a length ratio ranging from 1.0 to 1.6 are obviously different from those of very short shear links with a length ratio less than 1.0. Additionally, shear links made of different steel materials have differences in mechanical properties. Based on Q345 steel, three ordinary shear links with a length ratio of 1.36 were designed to intensively explore the influence of stiffener configurations and spacing on mechanical properties. Under cyclic loading tests, the failure modes, hysteresis curves, skeleton curves, secant stiffness curves and energy dissipation capacities of shear link specimens were recorded. The results show that the overstrength factor and inelastic rotation of specimens SL-1 and SL-2, which had different stiffener configurations, reached 1.59 and 0.10, while those of specimen SL-3, which had wider stiffener spacing, reached 1.48 and 0.07, which showed that varying the stiffener configuration has no obvious effect, while relaxing stiffener spacing can result in severe buckling of the web. Additionally, its bearing capacity, inelastic rotation, secant stiffness and energy dissipation capacity reduced. Hence, the stiffener spacing should satisfy the requirements of the specification and not be too wide. Based on ABAQUS software, finite element models of ordinary shear links proved to be accurately consistent with test specimens in terms of mechanical properties. On this basis, 114 numerical models of ordinary shear links with different length ratios, stiffener spacings, flange-to-web area ratios, flange strengths, web depth-to-thickness ratios and stiffener thicknesses were designed to study the influence on the overstrength factor.