Introducing and numerical study of an innovative rotational damper with replaceable hourglass steel pins

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel rotational damper, called rotational yielding damper (RYD), for enhancing the seismic behavior of new and existing building structures. In the proposed damper, hourglass-shaped cylindrical steel pins, named hourglass steel pins (HSP), are used as energy dissipating elements, which can be easily replaced in case of failure after severe earthquakes. The earthquake input energy is dissipated through inelastic deformations of HSPs during the loading. The effectiveness of HSP as an energy dissipation element has already been validated numerically and experimentally in various locations of structures. In this paper, a numerical study is performed to evaluate the behavior of the proposed damper and investigate the effects of important damper parameters on the cyclic response of a simple steel frame equipped with it. In addition, the application of the proposed damper in an eccentrically braced frame is also studied. For these purposes, a multi-scale modeling approach in Abaqus software is used to develop numerical models. The results clearly reveal that a properly designed and manufactured RYD has high energy dissipation capacity and equivalent viscous damping as well as high lateral strength and stiffness. Therefore, it can be inferred that RYD can serve as an energy dissipation device in building structures.