Development of Structural Metal Energy-Dissipation Techniques for Seismic Disaster Mitigation of Buildings in China

Abstract

Buildings in seismic zones are required to provide proper stiffness and load-bearing capacity to resist frequent earthquakes, and possess proper ductility and energy-dissipating capacity to prevent collapse under rare earthquakes. To meet these requirements, the concept of structural energy-dissipation techniques for the bi-functions of load-bearing and energy dissipating are proposed. A number of structural metal energy-dissipation elements, such as buckling-restrained steel plate shear walls, non-buckling corrugated steel plate shear walls, two-level yielding steel coupling beams and energy-dissipative columns, have been developed. They are designed to provide stiffness/strength to guarantee the operation of buildings under frequent earthquakes, but also dissipate energy to reduce seismic effects to a considerable extent for collapse-prevention of buildings. The experimental and theoretical studies on these structural metal energy-dissipating dampers are presented. The efficiency of these structural dampers for disaster mitigation of buildings against earthquakes are also presented to provide a reference for their practical application.