Structural behavior of steel building with concentric and eccentric bracing: A comparative study

Many existing steel buildings need to be retrofitted to overcome the deficiencies to resist the lateral loading. In the present study, a six storied steel building has been modeled and then analyzed due to lateral earthquake and wind loading, dead and live load. The performance of the same steel building has been investigated for different types of bracing system such as concentric (crossed X) bracing and eccentric (V-type) bracing using HSS sections. The performance of the building has been evaluated in terms of lateral storey displacement, storey drift as well as axial force and bending moment in columns at different storey level. The effectiveness of various types of steel bracing on the structure has also been investigated. More importantly, the reduction in lateral displacement has been found out for different types of bracing system in comparison to building with no bracing. From the present study, it has been found that the concentric (X) bracing reduces more lateral displacement and thus significantly contributes to greater structural stiffness to the structure.