Failure Laws of Cyclically Loaded Steel Joints Revealed from a Thermodynamic Perspective

Using cyclically loaded beam-column joints with cast steel connectors (BCJCC) as a case study (Bao 2012), this work attempts to reveal the failure law from a thermodynamic perspective. By applying a network-free renormalization, modes and characteristic parameters are constructed to characterize stressing state evolution. Due to the attractor effect of phase transition, a clustering algorithm can be applied to reveal the approximate phase transition loads of steel joints. After that, the phase transition loads can be verified using the renormalization perspective, which can also serve as a reference for seismic design.