3.4.

3 Ability of Overall Structural System to Take Advantage of Ductility

If yielding of a ductile connection produces a hinge in a structure which leads to

or causes a brittle failure elsewhere in the structure, the benefits of this ductility are,
at best, underutilized.

3.4.4 Conclusion

It is the opinion of this committee that transfer of anchor bolt load to

reinforcement in the supporting member will produce a ductile design, provided the
reinforcement is properly detailed to yield prior to concrete failure.
Recommendations for detailing reinforcing steel are listed in Section 3.7 of this
report.

Anchorage design should be approached as a global structural design issue,

focusing more on the development of ductile load-resisting paths as opposed to the
ductility of a single element. Once these load paths are developed, the engineer can
then correctly assess the effect of a ductile connection and decide the requirements
that should be imposed on an individual anchor.

3.5 DISTRIBUTION OF ANCHOR BOLT FORCES

Before an anchor bolt can be designed, the maximum force in the bolt must be
determined. As stated above, this design basis should depend on the nature of the
applied load.

An anchorage is ductile if the capacity of the concrete for each of the modes of
failure is greater than the yield capacity of the bolt or reinforcement. If the bolt is to
be the ductile element, then the design of the reinforced concrete elements depends
only on the size of the bolt. The size of the bolt, however, can only be determined
when the forces applied to the anchor group are distributed to the individual anchor
elements (unless the bolt is sized by the equipment manufacturer).
1
I
If the anchorage is to be nonductile, the forces that are used to design the
I
concrete elements are the forces that result when the factored loads are distributed to
the anchor group. Sizing of the bolt requires that the distribution of forces under
service loads be determined. Therefore, in both ductile and nonductile design, the
forces applied must be distributed to the anchor elements. The assumptions
regarding this distribution, however, can vary depending on the type of design
3
chosen.

3-7