NUMERICAL STUDIES OF LATTICE-TYPE BEAM-COLUMN CONNECTORS

Abstract

The importance of the beam-column joints in steel structures cannot be overemphasized In this work a lattice-type beam-column connector is proposed to provide sufficient stiffness strength and some viscoelastic damping as well as plastic energy dissipation The connector is comprised by short micro-rods in a cube resembling the atomic lattice structures By adding more micro-rods and suitable geometric arrangement the connector exhibits sufficient stiffness and strength Adding rubber increases the its damping Materials of the micro-rods are conventional construction steel soft metal such as tin or hard metal tungsten The empty space in the cube can be filled up with polymer material such as rubber-like Hence the connector becomes a metal-polymer composite where the metallic micro-rods are embedded in the polymer matrix Variety of structures with beam-column connector have been simulated by finite element analysis Our results show that energy can be significantly dissipated by plastic and viscoelastic deformation It is found that in the linear range the energy dissipation capacity of the composite connector is largely enhanced by the rubber-like material Pre-straining of the micro-rods also show damping enhancement In addition our results show tunable stiffness and strength as well as plastic deformation can be achieved by designing the micro-rods including their geometry and material selection in the cube Linear viscoelastic damping of the cantilever beam with the connector is small but more than the case without using the lattice-type beam-column connector Our research demonstrates that artificial porous material such as the lattice-type connector may provide sufficient mechanical properties to be used in civil engineering applications

Date of Award	2016 Aug 19
Original language	English
Supervisor	Yun-Che Wang (Supervisor)