BEHAVIOR TEST AND RESTORING FORCE MODEL OF DISC-SPRING SELF-CENTERING BUCKLING-RESTRAINED BRACES

In order to overcome the large residual deformation of regular buckling-restrained braces under strong earthquake excitations, a novel disc-spring self-centering buckling-restrained brace (DS-SCB) is invented, and the construction and mechanism of the novel DS-SCB are presented. The DS-SCB consists of buckling-restrained brace (BRB) system and self-centering (SC) system in parallel, which can realize different hysteresis characteristic curves by controlling the pre-pressure of the combined disc-spring and the yield force of the steel core. Three different types of DS-SCBs were fabricated, the quasi-static tests were carried out and failure characteristics of DS-SCBs were analyzed. The residual displacement and hysteretic energy dissipation were discussed and the hysteretic restoring force model was proposed. The experimental results show that the DS-SCB has good energy dissipation capacity and can control the residual deformation effectively. The simulation results based on restoring force model proposed in this paper have good agreement with the experimental data. The novel DS-SCB is a good energy dissipation device with stability behavior and less residual deformation.