STEEL AND COMPOSITE STRUCTURES, cilt.35, sa.5, ss.687-699, 2020 (SCI-Expanded)
This paper focus on the buckling restrained braces (BRBs) with new casing members (CMs). Seven BRBs with CMs consisting of precast concrete modules (PCMs) were tested to investigate the effects of CMs on the cyclic performance of BRBs. The PCMs consisted of plain and reinforced concrete casted into wooden or steel molds than they were located on the core plate (CP) via bolts. There were 14 or 18 PCMs on the CP for each BRBs. The technique of the PCMs for the CM provides that the BRBs can be constructed inside the steel or reinforced concrete (RC) structures. In this way, their applications may be rapid and practical during the application of the retrofitting. The test results indicated that the cyclic performance of the BRBs was dominated by the connection strength and confinement of the PCMs. The BRBs with PCMs wrapped with fiber reinforced polymers (FRPs) sustained stable hysteretic performance up to a CP strain of 2.0 %. This indicates that the new designed BRBs with PCMs were found to be acceptable in terms of cyclic performance. Furthermore, the connection details, isolation materials and their application techniques have been also investigated for the improved BRB design in this study.