The Seismic Performance Research Of Triple Circular Steel Tube Energy Dissipater

According to a review of the available literature, strong earthquakes happened in the history not only resulted in casualties for human beings, but also caused large economical losses. Thus, increasing weight was put by the researchers, especially in the earthquake-prone countries, on investigating the anti-seismic technologies, e.g. energy dissipation technology. Buckling-restrained energy dissipater is one of the most novel damping system developed in recent years. Scholars at home and abroad did a lot of research on buckling-restrained energy dissipater and has obtained many achievements. The End-strengthening Triple Circular Steel Tube Energy Dissipater system(ETCSTED),as a new type of energy dissipater, the research about it is less at present.Parametrical analysis was conducted to investigate the global and local stability behaviors and rational clearance of the ETCSTED. The numerical simulations for the ETCSTED system were conducted by using the finite element software ABAQUS. The FE models were developed for the ETCSTED system with different diameter-thickness ratio, confinement ratio, clearance and radius-length ratio. The buckling modes, load capacity and the hysteretic energy dissipation of the ETCSTED was analyzed. The author in this paper tried to employ the normal energy dissipater system and ETCSTED system into the steel frame system. Response spectrum and time history analyses(both frequent-occurred and rare-occurred earthquake) were carried out for both the pure steel frame and the steel frame with normal energy dissipater system and ETCSTED system using the finite element software SAP2000.The analysis results show that the ETCSTED system has the optimal hysteretic energy dissipation performance when the diameter-thickness ratio of core stress steel pipe is 25.0, when the confinement ratio is 6.04,when the clearance between steel pipe is 1 mm and when the radius-length ratio is 0.125. In elastic stage, the steel frame with ETCSTED system significantly provide a better damping effect for the structure than the steel frame without energy dissipater. The ETCSTED remained elastic thus shows an identical damping behavior with the equal-stiffness normal energy dissipater system. However, the steel frame with ETCSTED system can contribute more damping effect than the steel frame with equal-stiffness normal energy dissipater system after enter into the plastic stage. At this stage,the ETCSTED system gives play to the seismic energy dissipation function in its true sense.