new fused steel-coupling beam with optimized shear panel damper

This paper summarizes the development of a new replaceable horizontally steel arc-cut damper (hacd) designed as a fuse element in steel-coupling beams for earthquake protection of reinforced concrete shear walls with openings. the hacd is fabricated from a steel arc-cut plate and restraining plates positioned by vertical steel stiffeners. the proposed damper is an in situ, weld-free energy dissipater device, which eliminates the on-site installation difficulties. the seismic induced energy is dissipated through shear yielding of the arc-cut plate when the device is subjected to inelastic cyclic deformation. the optimized shape of hacd with adequate ductility and dissipation energy capacity is obtained using finite-element analysis. the result of numerical analysis under pseudo-dynamic displacements indicates its suitable energy dissipation, stable hysteric response, and remarkable ductility through shear yielding of the arc-cut shear plate. the performance of the numerical approach is justified through the analysis of tested dissipative device available in the literature.