A new Coplanar Dual Core Buckling-Restrained Brace

This study presents a new all-steel Buckling-Restrained Brace (BRB) named Coplanar Dual Core (CDC) BRB, that consists of rectangular cross-sectional core divided into two coplanar yielding lateral bands, whose movements are constrained by an external restrainer (ER) and internal (IR). In contrast with the traditional BRB dog-bone shaped core, CDC-BRB has advantage can be easily extracted inspected. The ER is composed tubes welded to pair solid calibrated bars. IR simultaneously laser cut from same sheet steel, which provides additional advantages: minimum material waste, length, regular well controlled gap, reduction weight manufacturing cost. Formulae design CDC-BRB, determine appropriate values gaps, predict its response ultimate energy dissipation capacity proposed. Four specimens representing CDC-BRBs different gaps tested under cyclic loadings failure. results tests show behavior stable, highly dissipative, predicted insofar fit proposed values.