Seismic Performance Evaluation of a Proposed Buckling-Restrained Brace for RC-MRFS

This paper presents a novel buckling-restrained brace (BRB) where the inner core is restrained by a concrete infilled Expanded Polystyrene Sheet (EPS) instead of the conventional concrete infilled tube section, to resist inner core buckling. It serves two purposes, firstly, the EPS is a ductile material, which is favourable in terms of seismic performance and, secondly, the outer construction material has better corrosion resistance. Thus, the life of the steel core can be prolonged. In this study, 6 BRB specimens were prepared, of which 3 BRB specimens were infilled with concrete and the remaining 3 BRB specimens with concrete and EPSs, in order to study their performance under cyclic loading. Three different core heights, all with the same core thickness, were adopted. The test results indicate that the load-carrying capacity of this novel BRB is higher than the conventional BRB. Further, the length of the steel tube also affects the strength of the seismic disaster mitigation system. Lastly, a numerical study on a single bay RC frame, with and without BRB subjected to time history analysis, was conducted to check the global performance of this novel system. It was found that the structural responses had substantially decreased.