Optimal design of new steel connections

The Limited Resistance Rigid Perfectly Plastic Hinge (LRPH) are special steel connections mainly usable to join beam elements of plane or spa-tial steel frames. The fundamental characteristics of these devices are the mutu-al independence of their own resistance and stiffness features as well as the re-spect of assigned constraints related to the elastic and limit behaviour of the joined elements. Within the frame structural scheme, the device plays the role of a rigid perfectly plastic hinge, constituted by a suitably sized sandwich sec-tion. The efficient use of the LRPH in the relevant frame depends on the appro-priate design of the device geometry. In the present paper, a new approach de-voted to the optimal flexural design of the LRPH is presented, according with the imposed mechanical constraints as well as with further suggested technolog-ical ones. The optimization procedure is based on a genetic algorithm approach and different applications are reported confirming the good applicability of the computational method as well as the reliability of the relevant device.