Performance of steel frame installed with buckling-restrained braces

The hysteretic behavior of buckling-restrained brace (BRB) and conventional brace under cyclic load, the performance of the steel frame with BRBs or conventional steel brace under mono-tonic, cyclic horizontal load and seismic load were analyzed based on ANSYS. The results were compared with experimental results. The results indicate that BRB can undergo fully-reversed axial yield cycles without loss of stiffness and strength. BRB is confirmed to have nearly the same yielding stress and ultimate strength under tension and compression, whose superior seismic energy dissipation ability is better than the conventional steel brace. The symmetrical bilinear resilience model of BRB is confirmed. The results of numerical analysis based on ANSYS agree well with experiments. Compared with conventional steel braces, when BRBs are applied into steel frame, the intensified stiffness, strength and energy dissipation ability of the steel frames will be improved. Compared with the steel frame structures with conventional steel braces, the seismic responses (displacement, acceleration, force) of the steel frame structures with BRBs are greatly reduced and seismic performance is improved. Therefore BRB with simple bilinear resilience is adapted to apply in structures with more requirement to resist horizontal and seismic load. It makes the analysis and design of structures more convenient.