Low‐damage steel structures for enhanced life‐cycle seismic performance

During an earthquake, steel frame buildings with bracings are prone to high absolute floor acceleration demands, thereby causing damage to acceleration-sensitive non-structural elements and building content. Inelastic deformations in steel bracings and/or their end connections often necessitate the use of capacity design rules to meet the life safety requirements established by seismic design standards. This paper presents an alternative steel frame building configuration where energy dissipation is mostly achieved through friction dampers acting as dissipative connectors between the floor diaphragms and the steel frame(s) with bracings. The dampers consist of friction pads made from composite materials which are not susceptible to galvanic corrosion. Physical experiments suggest that the friction pads are effective in dissipating the seismic energy through friction. Nonlinear response history analyses of a prototype 6-storey steel frame building featuring friction dampers as dissipative floor connectors demonstrate that a) higher mode effects are mitigated; b) capacity-design in the steel frame(s) with bracings is not imperative to ensure a uniform lateral drift distribution; and c) the seismic response variability in storey-based engineering demand parameters is reduced remarkably compared with that of the conventional counterpart with rigid diaphragms. All-inall, the alternative building configuration has high potential to minimize earthquake-induced repairs over a building’s service life.