Numerical Investigation of Residual Displacement of Rocking Self-Centering Columns Under Cyclic Loading

Abstract

Well-designed rocking self-centering (RSC) columns are capable of achieving small residual displacement. However, few studies conducted the quantitative analysis for the residual displacement of RSC columns. The residual displacement is the product of the struggle between the self-centering (SC) capacity and the energy dissipation (ED) capacity. In this study, a SC factor and an ED parameter were defined to reflect the SC and ED capacity of the RSC column, respectively. The influence of eight common design parameters on the SC factor and the ED parameter was explored using factorial analysis. Parametric analysis was performed to investigate the tendency of the SC factor and the ED parameter with the increase of maximum drift. According to the results of the parametric analysis, the effect of the SC factor and the ED parameter on the distribution of the residual drift was researched statistically. A simplified formula was proposed to calculate the upper limit of the residual drift. What is more, a set of predictive regression formulas was established to estimate the actual residual drift, these regression formulas have an applicable condition that the ED parameter should be larger than 0.75. When the ED parameter was less than 0.75, the residual drift is approximate to zero.