Experimental Study on Cyclic Performance of a Damage-Free Brace with Self-Centering Connection

Abstract

This paper investigates the experimental behavior of a self-centering (SC) timber brace that employs the resilient slip friction joint (RSFJ) for energy dissipation. Due to the inherent characteristics of the RSFJ, mainly rotational flexibility, it was observed that the brace is susceptible to lateral instability. As will be shown experimentally, the demerit to this lateral instability is the reduction of the bracing capacity in compression, although it is of an elastic type and recovers at the end of unloading. Therefore, this paper aims to prevent the instability issue in the RSFJ-brace system. To do so, a proper framework to predict and quantify the instability is developed, and then a quasi-static test is performed on a small-scale (1∶3) specimen to evaluate the accuracy of the proposed framework. In order to address the instability problem, the antibuckling tubes (ABT) concept with associated stiffness requirements is introduced in the second part in which the effectiveness is assessed using a quasi-static test on a full-scale specimen. Results indicate that the utilization of the ABT will rule out the possibility of instability.