Elastic Displacement Spectrum-Based Design Approach for Precast Concrete Frame with Replaceable Energy-Dissipating Connectors

ABSTRACT

A precast concrete frame with replaceable energy-dissipating connectors (REDC) is designed as an innovative system. The REDCs are placed at the top and the bottom of the beam-ends to dissipate energy during major earthquakes. A displacement spectrum-based design method is presented, which can directly determine the target period under strong earthquakes. The results of nonlinear time-history analysis of an example structure indicate that the displacement response of the innovative structure under strong earthquakes can be estimated accurately only using elastic response spectrum, without considering additional plastic parameters such as equivalent damping or ductile factor during the design process.

KEYWORDS:

• Precast concrete frame
• equal displacement rule
• elastic displacement-based design spectrum
• displacementspectrum-based design method
• energy-dissipating device

Acknowledgments

National Natural Science Foundations of China (51978165 and 51838004) supported this paper. The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and advices, which greatly improved the quality of this manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundations of China [Grant No. 51978165 and 51838004] and the National Key R&D Program of China [Grant No. 2019YFC1509305].