EVALUATION OF THE SEISMIC BEHAVIOR OF PRECAST CONCRETE BUILDINGS WITH ENERGY DISSIPATING DEVICES

The poor performance of some precast structures have limited their use in seismic zones due to their low level of structural damping, P-I” effects and low ductility of de structural joints. These characteristics allow proposing the use of passive dissipating devices for improving their behavior. The seismic response of two precast buildings is studied in this work. The response of the structures equipped with energy dissipators is compared with the non-controlled case. The first structure is a low damped industrial precast concrete building with low ductility connecting joints. The second one is a 3D frame typically built in urban areas. The structures are simulated using the Simo’s formulation for beams. Each beam section is meshed in a secondary grid of fibers along the beam axis. The materials of each fiber can be composed of several components having appropriated constitutive laws. The simple mixing theory is used to treat the resulting composite. A special kind of element is developed for modeling the dissipating devices. The results obtained in this work allow validating the use of passive control for improving the seismic performance of precast structures.