Seismic Design of Steel Panel Dampers and Boundary Beams for Moment Resisting Frames

The proposed three‐segment steel panel damper (SPD) consists of a middle inelastic core (IC) and two end elastic joint (EJ) wide‐flange sections. During earthquakes, the two EJs are designed to remain elastic, while the IC undergoes large inelastic shear deformation, thereby dissipating seismic energy. To sustain large deformation and delay shear buckling of the IC web, stiffeners must be properly devised. This study adopts an optimization algorithm to proportion the SPDs and boundary beams to achieve the minimum steel weight design. The objective function is the total weight of the SPD, boundary beam, and panel zone. The design variables are the sectional properties of the SPD and boundary beam, and the doubler plate thickness. Constraints include the capacity design of the SPD, boundary beam and panel zone, the stiffeners of the IC web, compact section and lateral torsional buckling limit state design requirements. The “basic design” represents the lightest sections satisfying all constraints. The lateral stiffness of the two SPDs‐to‐boundary beam subassembly can be enhanced by increasing the stiffness of either the SPDs or the boundary beam. As examples, the optimization designs of increasing 50% more stiffness of the subassemblies as the new constraint were conducted also. The stiffness of the subassemblies was enhanced most effectively by increasing the beam depths and web thicknesses. Beam depth, beam strength, and doubler plate thickness are recommended to be constrained during the optimization process to achieve a practical and economical design.