Abstract:
The innovative Resilient Slip Friction Joint (RSFJ) technology has recently been developed and introduced to the New Zealand construction industry. This self-centring low damage avoidance technology not only aims to provide life safety, but also to minimise the earthquake-induced damage so that the building can be reoccupied quickly with minimal business disruption. The RSFJ technology provides the required seismic performance regardless of the material used for the main structural components, and can be used in various arrangements and applications to provide self-centring damage avoidance lateral load resisting systems. These applications include (but are not limited to) shear walls, tension-compression braces, tension-only braces and moment resisting frames. The performance of the RSFJ technology has previously been verified by joint component testing and full-scale experimental tests. This paper aims to provide a simple analysis and design procedure for use by structural engineers when using RSFJs in a structure. A step-by-step forced-based design procedure for use by structural engineers when using RSFJs in a structure. A step-by-step forced-based design procedure is provided which generally requires the use of the Equivalent Static Method (ESM) based on the New Zealand Standard for structural design actions together with non-linear static push-over and non-linear dynamic time-history simulations. A case-study prototype structure that uses RSFJ braces as the lateral load resisting members is considered to demonstrate the proposed design procedure. Furthermore, the seismic forces for the same structure are calculated using the Displacement Based Design (DBD) approach and the results are compared with those from the Forced-Based Design (FBD) approach. Overall, the findings of this paper confirms that the proposed approaches can be efficiently used when a seismic resilient design with the RSFJ technology is targeted.
