Seismic response of a steel resilient frame equipped with self‐centering column bases with friction devices

Abstract

AbstractIn the last two decades many researchers focused on the development of innovative building structures with the aim of achieving seismic resilience. Among others, steel Moment Resisting Frames (MRFs) equipped with friction devices in beam‐to‐column joints have emerged as an effective solution able to dissipate the seismic input energy while also ensuring the damage‐free behaviour of the system. However, to date, little attention has been paid to their column bases, which represent fundamental components in order to achieve resilience. In fact, column bases designed by current conventional approaches lead to significant seismic damage and residual drifts leading to difficult‐to‐repair structures. The present paper evaluates the seismic performance of steel MRFs equipped with an innovative damage‐free, self‐centring, rocking column base joints. The proposed column base consists of a rocking splice joint where the seismic behaviour is controlled by a combination of friction devices, providing energy dissipation capacity, and pre‐loaded threaded bars with disk springs, introducing restoring forces in the joint. The design procedure of the column base is presented, a numerical OpenSees model is developed to simulate the seismic response of a perimeter seismic‐resistant frame, including the hysteretic behaviour of the connection. Non‐linear dynamic analyses have been carried out on a set of ground motions records to investigate the effectiveness of the column base in protecting the first storey columns from yielding and in reducing the residual storey drifts. Incremental Dynamic Analyses are used to investigate the influence of the record‐to‐record variability and to derive fragility curves for the whole structure and for several local engineering demand parameters of the frame and of the column base connection. The results show that the damage‐free behaviour of the column bases is a key requirement when self‐centering of MRFs is a design objective.