Low cycle fatigue performance investigation on Transverse Steel Dampers for bridges under ground motion sequences using shake-table tests

Abstract The low cycle fatigue performance of metallic hysteretic dampers is widely concerned by researchers because the energy-dissipation mechanism of these dampers primarily relies on inelastic deformations of metals. To examine the low cycle fatigue performance of a metallic hysteretic damper for bridges, called the Transverse Steel Damper (TSD), shake-table tests are conducted on a 1/35-scaled cable-stayed bridge model installed with two types of TSDs with different yield strengths, and the bridge model is subjected to a series of ground motion sequences including pulse- and non-pulse-like ground motions. After that, the post-earthquake capacities of TSDs are further examined using monotonic quasi-static tests and compared with their pre-earthquake capacities. Then, three theoretical methods in the literature, two of which are improved in this study, are used to assess the fatigue performance of TSDs. The results indicate an excellent low cycle fatigue performance for TSDs, which experienced more than ten strong shakings and almost remained the original performance without any fatigue failure.