Hysteretic behavior of dissipative welded fuses for earthquake resistant composite steel and concrete frames

In recent years there has been increasing international interest about designing structures thatcost less to repair after they have been subjected to strong earthquakes. Considering this interest, aninnovative repairable fuse device has been developed for dissipative beam-to-column connections inmoment-resisting composite steel and concrete frames. The seismic performance of the device was assessedthrough an extensive experimental program comprising ten cyclic and two monotonic tests. These tests wereconducted on a single beam-to-column specimen with different fuse devices for each test. The devicesvaried in terms of the chosen geometric and mechanical parameters. The tests showed that the devices wereable to concentrate plasticity and to dissipate large amounts of energy through non-linear behavior.Numerical models were developed with Abaqus and simplified design models are also proposed.