Experimental study of friction dissipators for seismic protection of building structures

Abstract

This paper presents unidirectional shaking table tests of two reduced scale steel models of building frames; they have one and two floors, respectively. Such frames incorporate friction dissipators at every floor. The inputs are sine-dwells and artificial and registered earthquakes. This work belongs to a larger research project aiming to assess the seismic efficiency of friction dissipators by means of an integrated numerical and experimental approach. Inside this framework, the main objectives of these experiments are: (i) to collect a wide range of results useful to calibrate a numerical model derived inside the project, (ii) to contribute to clarify some of the most controversial issues about friction dissipators (behavior for inputs containing pulses, capacity to cut resonance peaks, introduction of high frequencies in the response, self-generated eccentricities), (iii) to better understand their dynamic behavior, (iv) to give an insight on the feasibility and reliability of using simple friction dissipators for seismic protection of building structures and (v) to characterize the hysteretic behavior of these devices. Most of these objectives are satisfactorily reached and relevant conclusions are stated.