Abstract:
The innovative Resilient Slip Friction Joint (RSFJ) technology has recently been developed and introduced to the New Zealand construction industry. This damage avoidance technology not only aims to provide life safety, but also to minimize the earthquake-induced damage so the building can be reoccupied after the event with minimal downtime. The RSFJ is a frictionbased energy dissipation device that provides the required seismic performance regardless of the material used for the main structural components. It can be used in various lateral load resisting systems including (but are not limited to) shear walls, rocking columns, 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. Different design codes around the world have different approaches to determine the design seismic loads yet most of them recommend to reduce the elastic base shear by a factor that is related to the ductility. Most of the codes (including the National Building Code of Canada (NBCC)) recommend ductility-related values for different types of conventional structures based on the type of lateral load resisting system and the material used. Nevertheless, there is still lack of information about the seismic design of buildings with more advanced technologies such as RSFJ. This paper aims to provide a simple analysis and design procedure for the structural engineers when designing a seismic resilient building with RSFJs. A step-by-step forced-based design procedure is provided that generally requires the use of the Equivalent Static Method (ESM) to specify the structural design actions followed by non-linear static pushover and non-linear dynamic time-history simulations to verify the performance. In this procedure, the designer adopts a force reduction factor at the start and verifies it at the end. A case-study structure that uses RSFJ braces as the lateral load resisting members is considered to explain and follow the proposed design procedure. Additionally, the paper discusses the use of the proposed procedure with the respect to the NBCC. Overall, the findings of this paper confirms that the proposed approach can be confidently used when a seismic resilient design with the RSFJ technology is targeted.