Mechanical performance and damping effect of multi‐stage yield metal sleeve damper

Abstract

The traditional metal yield dampers such as buckling-restrained brace are designed only for strong earthquakes. Under small earthquake, it is difficult to dissipate the energy for common single-stage yield damper. In addition, it is difficult to observe its damage state after earthquake and inconvenient to replace the energy dissipation components separately. Therefore, a new metal sleeve damper which can dissipate the energy under all levels of earthquakes is proposed in this study. Due to the different yield displacements of the energy dissipation strips with different aspect ratios, the damper has multi-stage yield characteristics. Considering the stiffness degradation effect from the semi-rigid joints on both sides of the strips, the mechanical performance parameters of the damper are derived. The quasi-static experiment of the damper is carried out. Finite element method (FEM) is utilized to simulate the performance of the damper. At last, the damping effects of the multi-stage yield damper and common single-stage yield damper are compared. The results indicate that the accuracies of the mechanical performance parameters computation formulas are high. The energy dissipation performance of the multi-stage yield damper is excellent. The correctness of the finite element (FE) modeling method is verified. The seismic performance of the RC frame with the multi-stage yield damper is improved significantly under all levels of earthquakes. Comparing with the single-stage yield damper, the multi-stage yield damper is more effective in the vibration control of the reinforced concrete (RC) frame.finite element method, mechanical performance, metal damper, multi-stage yield, quasistatic experiment | INTRODUCTIONMetal yield dampers which are widely used in structural seismic control have the advantages of clear mechanism and stable performance. 1 Common metal yield dampers mainly include buckling-restrained brace (BRB), shear panel damper, bending panel damper, and lead damper. 2,3 BRB has been intensively investigated, and it is widely used in seismic structures since its excellent damping performance and convenient installation. 4 The mechanical property of the BRB was analyzed by Carmeron et al. 5 A quasistatic experiment was carried out to obtain the hysteretic performance of the BRB. The Bouc-Wen model was