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Progressive collapse of buildings has raised questions on adequacy of the existing regulations to prevent local and, in turn, global collapses. The present study mostly focuses on the performance of welded moment connections against progressive collapse. The performance of moment connections suggested in the FEMA 350, which are proper for seismic forces, Welded Flange Plate (WFP), Reduced Beam Seaction (RBS), Welded Unreinforced Flange- Welded Web (WUF-W) and Free Flange (FF), has been studied. The models used include non-linear behavior of materials and geometrical nonlinear behavior. The behavior of steel materials used in the structure is the true behavior of steel was stress-strain, which has been considered in the model completely. The nonlinear stress-strain behavior of steel selected for modeling the real behavior of beam and column members in the structure. The material properties of all steel components were modeled using elastic-plastic material model from ABAQUS. For connection region porous material plasticity was used. The diagram of vertical force against vertical displacement for each connection was drawn, and the state of each connection failure was investigated. Making the large scale experimental models to study the progressive collapse of structures seems too difficult. Using finite element models to study the behavior of structures are relatively appropriate option with regard to time and cost. In all of the numerical models, shell (S4) element has been used to simulate the beams, columns and connections. This is a four-node element, which contains four integration points on the element. During the calculations, full integration method with more precision was used. For analysis of the models, dynamic explicit method was used. This method is suitable to analyze the models with more members having nonlinear characteristics of materials and large deformations. In this method, the central difference integrating is used to solve the dynamic equations. In every time step, this method performs simpler than other methods in solving dynamic equations since there is no need to inverse stiffness matrix in any time stage. The used numerical method has compared using the laboratorial results, which have tested in 2010 by NIST. The analytical results showed a good agreement with laboratory models. The results of numerical analyses illustrated that RBS connection has less strength in comparison with other connections and this connection reaches maximum vertical displacement with less force. Performance of FF and WUF-W connections is similar to each other. These connections more resistant in comparison with RBS. WFP connection is more resistant as compared with the WUF-W, FF and RBS connections against the failure of the column. Failure load in WFPconnection is twice of other connection, and according to the analytical results, this connection is suitable for HLOP structures. In all connections, rotation capacity corresponding to collapse prevention against column removal scenario is about twice of the accepted criteria that FEMA 350 has suggested for seismic loads.

Keywords: Moment frame, Explicit Dynamic Analysis, Ductile fracture, large deformation, Material Nonlinearity

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