Experimental and numerical study of a steel plate-based damper for improving the behavior of concentrically braced frames

Despite the high lateral stiffness and strength of the Concentrically Braced Frame (CBF), due to the buckling of its diagonal members, it is not a suitable system in high seismic regions. Among the offered methods to overcome the shortcoming, utilizing a metallic damper is considered as an appropriate idea to enhance the behavior of Concentrically Braced Frames (CBFs). Therefore, in this paper, an innovative steel damper is proposed, which is investigated experimentally and numerically. Moreover, a parametrical study was carried out to evaluate the effect of the mechanism (shear, shear-flexural, and flexural) considering buckling mode (elastic, inelastic, and plastic) on the behavior of the damper. Besides, the necessary formulas based on the parametrical study were presented to predict the behavior of the damper that they showed good agreement with finite element (FE) results. Both experimental and numerical results confirmed that dampers with the shear mechanism in all buckling modes have a better performance than other dampers. Accordingly, the FE results indicated that the shear damper has greater ultimate strength than the flexural damper by 32%, 31%, and 56%, respectively, for plates with elastic, inelastic, and plastic buckling modes. Also, the shear damper has a greater stiffness than the flexural damper by 43%, 26%, and 53%, respectively, for dampers with elastic, inelastic, and plastic buckling modes.