hysteretic dissipators made of aluminium and steel: optimal design and preliminary characterization tests

in this paper the optimal design of a dissipator made of aluminium and steel and principallysubjected to shear forces and the preliminary results of the characterization tests are described.the device has been designed on the basis of an optimization procedure with the objective tomaximize the energy dissipated in the device. the response of a 3d frame equipped with thedevice and subjected to 7 earthquakes compatible with the response spectrum of eurocode 8 isshown. the optimal response obtained from the characterization tests exhibits a gooddissipative behavior of the device, highlighted by a wide enough hysteresis cycle.