The plastic design of steel sway frames

This paper describes a simple procedure for the plastic design of steel swa y frames that are stiff enough for their design not to be governed by their deflections at the serviceability limit state. The procedure is based on o bservations made during experimental and numerical studies of the behaviour of such frames and on the recognition that a hypothesis proposed by Horne was likely to be valid. The research findings are summarised and the propos ed procedure is described. A worked example is given to show how the method is applied. The resulting design is validated by computer calculations.