Aluminum Panel Yielding Dampers : An Energy Dissipation Device for Earthquake Resistant Buildings

In this book, aluminum panel is introduced as a novel structural yielding damper. Aluminum is a material benefiting from advantages such as low yielding stress (LYS), low weight and a wide range of plastic behavior and suitable to be used as a yielding damper material. A comprehensive numerical study using ABAQUS software was done to indicate how aluminum panels behaved as yielding dampers. Six states of aluminum panels were used which included five types with different stiffener arrangements and one type without stiffeners. Results were evaluated in terms of curves of hysteresis and energy absorption and yield index. It was concluded that the number of stiffeners and their arrangement were among the factors affecting evaluation of aluminum panels. Consequently, the best aluminum panel was the one with vertical as well as horizontal stiffeners. Also, the best aluminum yielding damper (AYD) in terms of economy and energy absorption was AYD-3 which included three parallel aluminum plates. This book includes four following chapters: Chapter One: Introduction, Chapter Two: Materials and Methods, Chapter Three: Results and Discussions, and Chapter Four: Conclusions.