Seismic Testing of In-Plane Flexural Damper in Arched-Shape

Abstract

This study proposes an innovative displacement-dependent metallic yielding damper for seismic protection of building structures. The damper is designed to deform inelastically under in-plane flexural bending and becomes energy-dissipative with an improved efficiency in terms of material utilization, as compared with those designed to bend in an out-of-plane manner. Both component test and seismic performance test of the proposed damper have been conducted in this study. Hysteresis of the component test indicates consistent and effective energy-dissipative characteristics of the damper. The contour of cracks on the surface of the damper after testing is well correlated with the stress distribution obtained from numerical analysis. Moreover, excellent seismic performance of the proposed in-plane arched damper has been demonstrated via a series of shaking table tests on a five-story model structure. Experimental results indicate that, with the dampers implemented, the acceleration responses in both peak and root-mean-squares of all floors are significantly reduced and more pronounced with the earthquake intensity increased. Effectiveness of the seismic damper is also revealed from the increase of the effective modal damping of all modes identified.