Recently, Prof. Wang Jingfeng's research group at the College of Civil Engineering published a research paper in Structures, a world-famous journal in the field of structural engineering. The academic paper, entitled "Seismic fragility analysis of CFT frames with buckling-restrained braces and Steel braces under long- and short-duration ground motions," won the "Editor-in-Chief's Featured Article" award, which is jointly conferred by Elsevier Press and Leroy Gardner, the Editor-in-Chief of Structures and a fellow of the British Royal Academy of Engineering. The paper is recommended and promoted on the homepage of Elsevier.
Prof. WANG Jingfeng of the Hefei University of Technology coauthored this paper as the first author with his group member, Dr. LI Beibei. The National Natural Science Foundation of China (general program) and the Anhui University Collaborative Innovation Program funded the research.
Earthquake disasters are featured by their suddenness and non-predictability, causing secondary disasters and severely impacting society. As a widely used energy-dissipating and seismic mitigation component, buckling-restrained braces(BRBs) have a dual function of bearing and energy dissipation. Specifically, the BRBs dissipate the seismic energy by material yielding due to the axial tension/compression in a major earthquake, reducing the damage to the main structure.
The pre-fabricated composite structure, consisting of the BRBs and concrete-filled steel tube frames, conforms to the trend of China's building industrialization and enhances the seismic resilience of urban cities. However, some critical challenges relevant to this kind of structure are urgent to solve.These include the performance-based seismic design, seismic performance difference between the ordinary braces and BRBs, the influence of ground motion duration, and the probabilistic seismic fragility assessment. To solve these challenges, Prof. Wang's research team proposed a plastic seismic design method based on improved energy balance and a global failure mode. Further, based on the incremental dynamic analysis, the team developed a probabilistic seismic fragility analysis method for pre-fabricated concrete-filled steel tube frames with BRBs. Through the probabilistic aseismic capacity analysis to optimize damage factors, the law of the influence of ground motion duration on the cumulative damage to the structure was clarified. Moreover, the composite intensity indices of ground motion, for which the ground motion and spectral shape effect are considered, were optimized by analyzing the effectiveness, sufficiency, and robustness.
The research results are of guiding significance for the study of the correlation between the performance-based seismic design of the composite structures with BRBs and the ground motion duration-related cumulative damage.
In recent years, Prof. Wang's research team has published about 30 research papers in the Journal of Civil Engineering and Management, Journal of Building Structures,and several other celebrated journals in civil engineering. The papers, focusing on developing energy dissipating and seismic mitigation devices (BRBs and wall-type metallic dampers) and their connection with concrete/steel-framed structures, are highly appreciated by celebrated international scholars, including those in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The rotational performance, synergistic aseismic capacity, performance-based design methods, and probabilistic seismic fragility of the detailed connection between the devices and structures were also well studies in these researches.
Other achievements of Prof. Wang include proof-reading the Technical Specification for Application of Buckling-RestrainedBraces developed by the China Association for Engineering Construction Standardization (T/CECS817-2021) and editing Anhui's local Technical Specification for Application of Buckling-RestrainedBraces (DB34/T 5069-2017) and Technical Specification for Walltype Metallic Damper Seismic Dissipation of Buildings (DB34/T 3957-2021). His research outcomes have been applied to many projects, including Haikou Meilan International Airport.
Link to the related article:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.istruc.2022.03.078
