The plastic design of steel sway frames

This paper describes a simple procedure for the plastic design of steel sway 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 observations 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 proposed procedure is described. A worked example is given to show how the method is applied. The resulting design is validated by computer calculations.