Improving the Seismic Performance of Tall Steel Buildings Using Advanced Visco-Plastic Braces

In this paper, the results obtained from numerical simulations of the seismic response of a prototype 40-story building are presented to highlight the enhanced resilience of steel structures equipped with visco-plastic braces. A visco-plastic brace damper is a hybrid damping system that consists of a visco-elastic damper connected in series with a friction damper. Such a combination of both types of dampers compensates for the shortcomings of each type, maximizing the performance of the whole system. The results obtained from the simulation analyses demonstrate that the use of visco-plastic braces is a promising technique for controlling drifts and plastic deformations in structural members, enabling an effective and advanced seismic performance. Moreover, its novel configuration provides a mechanism to control the peak forces in the structure, thus leading to lower peak floor accelerations and velocities. Overall, the results suggest that visco-plastic braces are an excellent device/technology for performance-based seismic design of structures as it has the potential to simultaneously reduce structural and non-structural damage.