Seismic behavior of steel structures equipped with steel self-centering devices (SSCD)

Recent earthquakes have highlighted not only the need of providing sufficient security level to civil and industrial structures in order to limit the loss of human lives, but also the need of reducing the damaging of structural and non-structural elements so to minimize the economical losses. Within this framework, increasing interest is being given, from national and international standards, to the recentering capability of structures and antiseismic devices. Residual displacements cause, in fact, an important reduction of the security level of the building in case of aftershocks, prevent the recovery of activities inside the building and they are very difficult to be repaired. Within this work, the seismic behavior of a steel structure equipped with a steel self-centering device is studied through several Incremental Dynamic Analyses, IDA. The SSCD characteristics are varied in order to perform parametric analyses and to study the influence of each parameter on the global behavior.