Application of Elliptic Slits for Development of Slit Damper in Beam-to-Column Connection

The rigid steel connections were suffered severe damage because of low rotational capacity during earthquakes. Hence many investigations have been performed on the connections of steel structures. In order to prevent brittle failure of connections and damage of main structural members, steel slit dampers with uniform strip width are used in the beam-to-column connections. Slit damper is a plate or a standard section with a number of slits in the web. The remaining strips in the web of damper, dissipate the seismic energy with inelastic deformation absorption and also prevent seismic energy transmission to the main structural members. No special fabrication technique was involved in the slit dampers, thus the device can be easily used in practice. To verify the accuracy of finite element modeling, the obtained results of ABAQUS finite element software were compared with an experimental study done by Oh et al (2009). The analytical results have a good agreement with experimental ones and the average error is about 2%. According to the analyses performed in the ABAQUS, using steel slit dampers with uniform strip width is resulted in stress concentration at the ends of the damper strips, unbalanced distribution of Von-Mises stresses along the strips length and low participation of middle parts of slit damper strips in the energy dissipation. Therefore, to resolve these problems and energy-absorbing area rise in the end parts of strips, elliptic slit damper is proposed and compared with the previous investigated slit damper. Slits dimensions of elliptic slit damper are calculated as such that both of present and previous slit dampers have the same weight. The objective of this paper is to improve the seismic performance of steel slit dampers. Nonlinear analyses are carried out in the beam-to-column connections equipped with slit dampers. Effects of geometrical and material nonlinearity are considered in the analyses. Nonlinear characteristics of steels are defined with stress-strain curves. Bilinear stress-strain curves are used for all steel parts except the slit damper which is defined with completed stress-strain curve. Plasticity behavior of steel materials is based on the Von-Mises yielding criteria. Loading protocol recommended by FEMA-350 is used for cyclic analyses. All parts of connection are modeled using shell elements except the split-T plates and the upper plate of slit dampers which are modeled using solid elements. The results of connections analysis under cyclic loading show that the proposed elliptic slit damper causes better distribution of stresses along the damper strips, better hysteresis performance and increase the amount of energy dissipation in the beam-to-column connection. Also elliptic slit damper leads to strength and ductility increment in the connection. Additionally, it is concluded that in the proposed elliptic slit damper compared to the slit damper with uniform strip width, the energy dissipation and the maximum plastic rotation of connection increase about 99.6 and 26.8%, respectively.