Research on the topic of steel frames with semi-rigid connections (Partially Restrained (PR) construction or PR connection) has been conducted over the past 10 years. Despite significant research and development efforts, usage of PR principles has nevertheless been very slow in coming to the profession caused in part by the lack of easy access to reliable test data on these connections and also due to the lack of software for practical implementation. With the publication of the 2005 AISC specifications as well as Eurocode 3, practical implementation of the use of PR connections in structural systems is now a real possibility.

This Handbook presents a simple and comprehensive introduction that will help design practitioners implement these new developments into engineering practice. Beginning with a discussion of the new specifications and classifications of these connections, the authors go on to show, on the basis of the collected connections database, practical mathematical models for computer implementation, and provide case studies on these frames including composite construction. With the help of the user-friendly list of collected data in tabular form with illustrative figures, information on semi-rigid connections is now available in a single publication and may ultimately result in its wide-spread usage among practitioners.