Component Test, Fracture Simulation and Experimental Study on Steel and Shear Panel for Seismic Resistance

Abstract

This paper summarizes the experimental campaign carried out for the development of a new steel energy dissipative devices named Slit Dampers (SDs) designed for earthquake protection of structures. SDs consist in shear steel plates with appropriately shaped cut‐out portions of material for allowing maximum spread of plastic deformation along the device and then maximizing the hysteretic dissipative behavior. A total of eighty‐two steel shear plates with different openings and thicknesses are tested to investigate their behavior under cyclic pseudo‐static loading. Six types steel shear plates are studied, including the SD with narrow slits that divide the plate into rectangular links, and the butterfly fuse with a diamond‐shaped opening that create butterfly shape links in the plate. Other varying test parameters are: loading rate, material strength, and the number of in‐parallel damper elements. It is expected that the proposed model can be successfully used to predict the behavior of dampers in real‐world applications.