An experimental and numerical study on the behavior of butterfly-dampers with shear and flexural mechanism

In this paper, the behavior of an innovative metallic a butterfly-shaped link as damper with shear and flexural mechanism was investigated experimentally and numerically. The damper is directly attached to the diagonal member of the Concentrically Braced Frame (CBF) to prevent buckling of the braces. Since it is expected that nonlinear behavior of the system is limited to the dampers, the other parts of structures remind elastic that the damper can replaced easily after a severe earthquake. The experimental outcomes indicated that both types of dampers (with shear or flexural mechanism) pertain to stable hysteresis loops without any significant degradation in stiffness or strength. Comparing the dampers indicated that the shear damper has a greater ultimate strength (4.59 times) and stiffness (3.58 times) than flexural damper but a lower ductility (16%) and ultimate displacement (60%). Also, the shear damper has a considerable dissipation energy 14.56 times greater than flexural dampers where dissipating energy are affected by ultimate strength, stiffness and ultimate displacement. Also, based on the numerical study, the effect of main plate slenderness on the behavior of the damper was considered and the allowable slenderness was suggested to the design of the dampers. Numerical results confirmed that the flexural damper is more sensitive to the slenderness than shear damper. Accordingly, as the slenderness is less than 50 and 30, respectively, for, shear and flexural damper, no degradation in ultimate strength is realized. By increasing the slenderness, the maximum reduction of the ultimate strength, stiffness, and energy dissipation capacity reached by 16%, 7%, and 17% for SDB dampers whereas it is 3%, 33%, 20%, and 45% for MDB.