E‐stub stiffness evaluation by metamodels

Abstract

Joints behavior have an important role in the analysis of frames with bolted steel connections. Stiffness and strength are the most important parameters in the characterization of the moment rotation curve that describe semirigid connection behavior. One of the most popular method to evaluate those parameters is the component method that use analytical expressions to evaluate them, sometimes these expressions are complex and inaccurate. In this article, from a previous parametric study with finite element models, a metamodel is generated with Kriging to predict the stiffness of the E‐stub that is component that appears in three dimensional joints. This methodology has showed that is simple and enough accurate to evaluate joint components stiffness.