Design and Experimental Evaluation of a Small-Scale Buckling Restrained Brace Analog

In the event of an earthquake, structures experience large lateral loads that can lead to weak story mechanisms and result in premature building collapse. Strongback braced frames (SBF) are a type of seismic force resisting system that aim to evenly distribute horizontal loads up the height of the building to mitigate this failure mechanism. Previous research shows that SBFs are a promising way to better design for seismic demands, but these systems have not been fully explored to best exploit the design space. This work is a part of a project that aims to provide both numeric and experimental verification of these SBF systems. An important component of the SBF is the inelastic energy dissipating element. Often, this component is designed as a buckling restrained brace (BRB). As part of the experimental test set up, a small-scale BRB must be designed and tested. This thesis explains the relevance of the BRB to the project as a whole, discusses the scaling and design decisions that were made during initial prototyping, and presents initial results that suggest a small-scale device can effectively simulate the behavior of its full-scale counterpart. Following these initial tests, numerical modeling and experimental testing of a further improved design provides validation of device functionality over a range of brace strengths and stiffnesses. This work is instrumental in providing small-scale analogs of BRBs for future testing of SBFs and could be utilized by others to simulate the effects of other energy dissipating elements in the full-scale and small-scale experimental testing of structures