Cyclic behaviour of demountable metallic corrugated shear panel dampers

This study aims to develop a new demountable corrugated shear panel damper (DCSPD). The developed device is to upgrade the flat shear panel of the classical shear panel damper (classical SPD) using a corrugated shear panel. And the energy dissipating parts of the damper are demountable, allowing for easy processing, transport, and assembly onsite. Moreover, the new damper can make full use of the geometrical properties of the corrugated shear panel to overcome the shortcomings of the classical SPD, such as low initial stiffness and poor energy dissipation. A series of tests were conducted to systematically study the seismic performance of the proposed damper under quasi-static cyclic loading conditions. The effects of three key design parameters are discussed, including the corrugated direction and thickness of the shear panel and the thickness of the flange plate. The experimental results demonstrate that the direction of the corrugated shear panel changes the plastic failure modes of the dampers, resulting in the overall out-of-plane buckling failure of demountable horizontally corrugated shear panel damper (DCSPD-H) and the local buckling failure of demountable vertically corrugated shear panel damper (DCSPD-V). Therefore, the shear bearing capacity, ductility coefficient, and energy dissipation capacity of DCSPD-H are 5.56%, 10.23%, and 35.37% higher than those of the DCSPD-V, respectively. Moreover, an increase in the thickness of the shear panel will significantly improve the seismic performance of the damper, whereas an increase in the thickness of the flange plate may hinder the deformability of the damper. Further, the finite element models of tested dampers were established, and the plastic collapse mechanisms and the sharing of energy-absorbing of each part were investigated. Finally, simple design equations are presented through parametric studies of dampers with different geometric dimensions.