Braces are commonly used lateral resisting systems in buildings. During large events, particularly seismic events, the buildings may experience buckling of these bracing elements. Capturing the behavior of individual braces to buckling is critically important if one is to determine the response of such buildings to large magnitude events. This educational application is intended to educate users on how braced frames should be modeled when performing numerical simulations of the entire building. This application will allow the user to explore how different modeling assumptions effect the response of a braced frame element and how the simulated response compares with actual experimental data. Allowing the user to validate their modeling assumptions is critically important for the user to gain competence in this area, as just producing hysteresis loops that look meaningful can be dangerously misleading.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1612843.