RATIONAL METHOD TO ALLOW FOR OVERALL STABILITY IN LOW RISE PLASTICALLY DESIGNED STEEL SWAY FRAMES.

It has been observed that ECCS-related sway provisions for the stability of low-rise structures can be erratic. In some cases the structure designed in accordance with these rules has to rely on sundry composite actions or strain-hardening to reach the rigid-plastic collapse load, in other instances overly conservative solution may be adopted if the rules are not immediately satisfied. The presented investigation shown that the recently developed rational multi-curve interaction approach gives a much better correlation with rigorous solutions without adding unduly to the workload of the design engineer.