Seismic performance assessment of steel MRFs retrofitted with arc and ring dampers

Recently, an arch and ring yielding damper (ARD), composed of a metallic central ring surrounded by four arcs, has been proposed as an innovative energy dissipation device to enhance the seismic resilience of structures. Although the hysteretic behavior of the ARD was examined, the efficiency of this novel damper when implemented in building structures has not been investigated. This article focuses on the seismic performance of sub-standard steel moment resisting frames (MRFs) equipped with ARDs. First, a novel mathematical equation is developed to predict the hysteretic response of ARD based on an extensive nonlinear finite element analysis including various geometrical parameters of the device, using multivariate nonlinear fitting methods and artificial neural network. Then, to evaluate the effectiveness of ARDs, a comparative seismic response analysis of a four-story steel building without (MRF) and with ARDs (MRF-ARD) is performed under different seismic hazard levels within a multi-level framework. The parameters of the ARDs are determined using a displacement-based design method. The analysis is performed by Nonlinear Time History Analysis (NLTHA) and Endurance Time Analysis (ETA) methods. The numerical results show that upon adding ARDs to the structure, the inter-story drift and base shear ratios are reduced by about 20 % and 50 %, respectively, with the highest probability being for 10 %/50 years and 2 %/50 years hazard levels (BSE-1 and BSE-2, respectively). The obtained ET curves also show that the original MRF cannot meet the life safety performance level at the BSE-1 hazard level, while the MRF-ARD meets this requirement in an efficient manner. • Seismic performance assessment of steel MRF with novel arc-and-ring dampers (ARDs) • New expression for hysteretic response of ARD based on extensive parametric NLFEAs • A novel displacement-based design approach for the ARDs has been presented • Steel MRF with ARDs under different seismic hazard levels within a multi-level framework • ARDs dissipate a very high percentage of the input energy at all investigated hazard levels