Experimental investigation of hybrid buckling-restrained braces

Though a buckling-restrained brace (BRB) has good seismic performance, it cannot dissipate energy under wind loads or weak earthquakes because its core does not yield. A hybrid buckling-restrained brace (H-BRB), which is a type of hybrid damping system consisting of a BRB member and a viscoelastic damper, has been proposed to improve the wind-resisting performance of the standard BRB. In order to evaluate the wind and seismic performance of the H-BRB system, two H-BRB specimens and one BRB specimen were tested in this study. The variable for the wind performance test was the shear action mechanism of the viscoelastic damper with and without a side connection plate, and the variable for the seismic performance test was whether a separation occurred between the steel tube and a stopper after the yielding of the steel core. The wind performance test showed that H-BRB’s mechanism could be realized only when the viscoelastic damper operated with double shear action. Also, the seismic performance test demonstrated that H-BRB could satisfy the required performance when the tube and stopper were separated after the core’s yielding.