Hysteretic behavior and design considerations of staggered truss framing systems

By analyzing the ductility of two typical failure modes of staggered truss framing systems, it is known that the failure mode of chords failure is better than that of web members failure. In order to achieve the expected failure mode, the capacity design principles and a more accurate calculation model are adopted to obtain the axial force demands of truss web members. Then, two 1:2.5-scale truss specimens with different lengths of vierendeel panel were designed, fabricated, and tested under cyclic loadings. The experiment showed that the trusses designed by this method can achieve the expected structural failure mode under lateral force. However, the ductility factors of the specimen SST1 with equal panel length and the specimen SST2 with large vierendeel panel length are 2.91 and 2.47 respectively, which are relatively poor compared with the ordinary moment-frame systems, and increasing the length of the vierendeel panel cannot improve the ductility of truss. Truss specimen with longer vierendeel panel had greater ultimate lateral displacement but lower bearing capacity and initial stiffness. And the analysis showed that the energy dissipation capacity of the two specimens was relatively close, and increasing the length of the vierendeel panel cannot improve the energy dissipation capacity of truss neither. •A capacity design method was proposed for web members of staggered truss framing systems (STFS).•The test results show that the truss designed by proposed method can achieve the expected failure mode under lateral load.•The test results showed that the ductility factor of truss is lower than that of the ordinary moment-frame systems.•The influence of length of vierendeel panel on the seismic performance of truss is analyzed through the tests.