Lateral bracing has long been used in design practice to enhance the carrying capacity of the lateral buckling of the beam. Many factors. critically important to lateral bracing performance. do not appear in design formulas. Some of these factors are discussed in this study for the application to short 1 - beams under repeated loadings through parametric studies with an analytical model : the brace 10' cation along the length of the beam. the height of the bracing above the shear center of the beam. and the strength and stiffness of the brace. The parametric studies are carried out using a propped cantilever arrangement. and also using a geometrically (fully) nonlinear beam model for the brace as well as the beam to capture the system buckling. An idealized bracing system is configured to restrain lateral motion. but not rotation. A multiaxial cyclic plasticity model is also implemented to better represent cyclic metal plasticity in con. junction with a consistent return mapping algorithm.

• Lee Sang Gab(한국해양대학교)
• Keith D. Hjelmstad(University of Illinois, Dept. of Civil Engineering)