Analytical and Experimental Studies of the Seismic Performance of Drawer Bracing System (DBS)

In this work,a special type of bracing systems,called the “drawer bracing system (dbs)”,is proposed for improving the seismic performance of concentrically braced frames. dbs is a passive energy dissipating device belonging to the class of metallic yielding hysteresis dampers and is used to control and enhance the structure’s seismic performance. it was developed at the k. n. toosi university of technology (kntu) and was tested in a half-scale braced frame. dbs is made up of three parallel plates that are joined together via transfer plates. the transfer plates are at right angle to the parallel plates and undergo minor axis bending. the parallel plates help the system remain elastic,control the global buckling of the system and provide the required strength and stiffness to transfer load to the energy dissipating components of the system. energy dissipation occurs due to inelastic behavior of the transfer plates. height,thickness,width,pitch,shape and connectivity of these plates may be varied to get the desired performance characteristics such as strength,stiffness and ductility. this paper provides an overview of the proposed system,the half-scale tests setup and the corresponding measurement results. moreover,nonlinear finite element analysis of the system was carried out in abaqus to evaluate its seismic performance. experimental and analytical results show that the hysteresis loop of this passive energy dissipating device is wide,symmetric and very stable,corresponding to a significant amount of energy absorption due to buckling elimination in steel braces. © 2017,iran university of science and technology.