Pipe damper, Part I: Experimental and analytical study

In this paper the behavior of steel pipes, filled and unfilled with concrete, is studied under cyclic shear to examine the possibility of their use as a seismic damper. Two specimens of steel pipes filled inside with concrete are tested under monotonic and cyclic shear. Four other specimens of bare steel pipes are tested under fully reversed cyclic shear loading. The results show that the bare steel pipes are capable of absorbing a great amount of energy under a severe cyclic shear loading with a stable hysteretic behavior. This behavior is also simulated using the finite element method. Then, parametric studies are performed to investigate the effects of variations in geometrical properties of the pipe on its hysteretic behavior. A simplified bi-linear model is proposed to approximate the hysteretic behavior of the steel pipe as a metallic-yielding damper.