Large deflection and post-buckling analysis of 3-dimensional frames with semi-rigid connections

All joints are neither rigid nor pinned, but contain a certain degree of flexibility or rigidity which has an significant influence over the buckling capacity of a frame. The commonly assumed fully rigid or frictionless joints connecting the members of a skeletal structure will introduce a gross error to the results of an analysis. This paper is addressed to the development of a numerical procedure for steel frames with flexible connections in which the commonly used extreme assumption of rigid or pinned connection is abandoned and semi-rigid joints are considered.