2017 Volume 24 Issue 93 Pages 93_17-93_28
Energy dissipation devices, such as high-performance buckling-restrained braces (BRBs) are expected to withstand major earthquakes three times without being replaced. For implementing the devices to bridges and other steel structures, it is important to verify the effect of reducing structural response under a ground motion. This paper presents the seismic capacity of BRBs by considering the initial imperfections of the BRB support brackets under various combinations of the BRB length, support bracket length in steel rigid-frame bridge pier. By the analyses, it was confirmed that the effect of initial imperfection is small, and we propose the BRBs had good seismic capacities in the support bracket drift angle 0.002 under level 2 earthquake motion.
