The behaviour of steel and steel-concrete composite joints has been thoroughly studied in the
last decades, with focus on their influence on the global response of framed structures.
Nevertheless, especially as far as composite steel-concrete structures are concerned, there are
no well-established design guidelines to optimize choices and adequately design composite
joints. For this purpose, the Guidelines for the seismic design of steel-concrete composite
framed structures and the non-linear analysis and the Guidelines for the seismic design of
steel-concrete composite joints were developed within the RELUIS 2014-16 project, financed
by the ‘Dipartimento di Protezione Civile’ (Department of Civil Protection). This paper
highlights the main issues that need to be addressed with regards to the seismic design of the
beam to column joints and frames belonging to steel-concrete structures, discussing rules
reported within codes, as well as modelling approaches. The provisions that are referred to
this paper are the ‘Norme Tecniche per le Costruzioni’ (NTC2008) and the Eurocode 4 [EN
1994-1-1:2004] as far as the general rules to be applied to the design of a composite structure
are concerned, and the Eurocode 8 [EN 1998-1:2004] as regards the specific rules to be
applied.
