A Novel Dual Self-Centering Friction Damper for Seismic Responses Control of Steel Frame

Due to their weight, the seismic response control of buildings needs a large-scale damper. To reduce the consumption of shape memory alloys (SMAs), this study proposed a dual self-centering pattern accomplished by the coil springs and SMA, which could drive the energy dissipation device to recenter. Combined with the friction energy dissipation device (FD), the dual self-centering friction damper (D-SCFD) was designed, and the motivation and parameters were described. The mechanical properties of D-SCFD, including the simplified D-SCFD mechanical model, theoretical index calculations of recentering, and energy dissipation performance, were then investigated. The seismic response mitigation of the steel frame adopting the D-SCFDs under consecutive strong earthquakes was finally analyzed. The results showed that a decrease in the consumption of SMA by the dual self-centering pattern was feasible, especially in the case of low demand for the recentering performance. Reducing the D-SCFD’s recentering performance hardly affected the steel frame’s residual inter-story drift ratios when the residual deformation rate was less than 50%, which can help strengthen the controls on the steel frame’s peak seismic responses. It is recommended to utilize the D-SCFD with not too high a recentering performance to mitigate the seismic response of the structure.

This creative work has been published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY 4.0) license which allows copying, and redistribution as well as adaptation of the original work provided appropriate credit is given to the original author and the conditions of the license are met.