Matthew East, Mohamed Ezzeldin, and Lydell Wiebe
Matthew East, PhD Candidate, Department of Civil Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, L8S 4L7, Canada, eastma@mcmaster.ca
Mohamed Ezzeldin, Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, L8S 4L7, Canada, ezzeldms@mcmaster.ca
Lydell Wiebe, Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, L8S 4L7, Canada, wiebel@mcmaster.ca
ABSTRACT
Steel flexural yielding arms can be an effective energy dissipation device for controlled rocking masonry walls. In controlled rocking masonry walls, uplift of the wall from the foundation is
allowed in a way that can localize damage to externally mounted energy dissipation devices and subsequently minimize post-earthquake residual drifts. Recent testing at McMaster University investigated the ability of steel flexural yielding arms to serve as easily replaceable energy dissipation devices with the ability to simultaneously resist sliding demands. Based on this previous testing, the current study investigates how to capture the behaviour of such devices through a finite element model using OpenSees, with the purpose of integrating the component models of flexural yielding arms with models of controlled rocking masonry walls. The flexural arm modelling approach is validated against the experimental data in terms of material data from coupon tests and low cycle fatigue parameters based on the observed hysteretic response from the experiments. The developed model is then used to investigate the performance of a wide array of devices, beyond the initial series of tests. The results showed that the proposed design equations are accurate within the examined geometric configurations.
KEYWORDS: seismic design, controlled rocking, reinforced masonry, energy dissipation device, numerical modelling
