Performance evaluation of a rocking steel column base equipped with asymmetrical resistance friction damper

A novel asymmetrical resistance friction damper (ARFD) was proposed in this study to be applied on a rocking column base. The damper comprises multiple steel plates and was fastened using high-strength bolts. The sliding surfaces can be switched into one another and can cause strength to be higher in the loading direction than in the unloading direction. By combining the asymmetrical resistance with the restoring resistance that is generated due to an axial load on the column, the rocking column base can develop a self-centering behavior and achieve high connection strength. Cyclic tests on the ARFD proved that the damper performs a stable asymmetrical hysteretic loop. The desired hysteretic behavior was achieved by tuning the bolt pretension force and the diameter of the round bolt hole. In this study, full-scale, flexural tests were conducted to evaluate the performance of the column base and to verify the analytical model. The results indicated that the column base exhibits a stable self-centering behavior up to a drift angle of 4%. The decompression moment and maximum strength reached 42% and 88% of the full plastic moment of the section, respectively, under a column axial force ratio of approximately 0.2. The strengths and self-centering capacity can be obtained by determining the bolt pretension force. The analytical model results revealed good agreement with the experimental results.