Seismic performance of a shear-type energy dissipation brace: Experimental investigation and numerical analysis

In this study, a novel shear-type energy dissipation brace (SEDB) was proposed, which integrated multiple pieces of steel shear plates on a single brace. The brace stiffness and yield load can be adjusted by changing the number of pieces and layers of the steel shear plates, which is more flexible than the traditional shear-type dampers. Three configurations of SEDBs were developed, including the flat steel plate-SEDB (F-SEDB), F-SEDB without core tube and corrugated steel plate-SEDB (C-SEDB). The quasi-static cyclic tests were conducted on three SEDBs to investigate the seismic performance. Experimental results showed that the proposed SEDB can achieve a stable hysteretic behavior, especially by adopting the core tube to prevent global out-of-plane deformation. Meanwhile, the C-SEDB has a more stable energy dissipation performance due to the high out-of-plane stiffness of the corrugated steel plates. The design procedure of the SEDBs was developed. Meanwhile, a finite element model was established and verified by the experimental results. The influences of the height-thickness and height-width ratio of steel plates were systematically investigated, which benefited the application and offered suggestions in engineering design.

Automated summary

In this study, a novel shear-type energy dissipation brace (SEDB) was proposed, which integrated multiple pieces of steel shear plates on a single brace. The stiffness and yield load of the brace can be adjusted by changing the number and layers of the shear plates, providing more flexibility compared to traditional shear-type dampers. Experimental results showed that the proposed SEDB exhibited stable hysteretic behavior and can effectively prevent global out-of-plane deformation when a core tube is utilized. The corrugated steel plate-SEDB demonstrated superior energy dissipation performance due to its high out-of-plane stiffness. The study also developed a design procedure for SEDBs and systematically investigated the influence of steel plate height-thickness and height-width ratio, providing valuable guidance for engineering design.