Test and evaluation of modified TADAS devices with different grades of steel

Triangular-plate added damping and stiffness (TADAS) devices are reliable metallic energy dissipaters for seismic upgrading used in design and retrofitting of civil structures. Conventional TADAS devices are designed with closed-ended slots. In this study, a modified form of the TADAS device is proposed with open-ended slots in order to reduce the manufacture cost, facilitate the assembling and avoid abrupt stiffness increase. Cyclic and monotonic loading tests are then conducted to investigate the mechanical characteristics of the modified TADAS devices with regular Q345 steel and low-yield point LY160 steel triangular plates. The test results show that although the hysteresis performances are stable, the cyclic hardening behavior is different between the TADAS specimens with different grades of steel. The TADAS specimen with LY160 triangular plates exhibits more significant overstrength behavior than the one with Q345 triangular plates in cyclic loading, which is unsuitable to be described by the classic Bouc-Wen model. Therefore, a modified Bouc-Wen model is proposed to describe such overstrength behavior. It is shown that the modified model is able to simulate different extent of overstrength behavior in cyclic loading, based on which the cyclic hardening behavior of the TADAS specimen with LY160 triangular plates can be well described.