Shape optimization design of steel shear panel dampers

Steel shear panel dampers (SSPDs) have a reasonably good and stable energy dissipation capacity, and are widely used in engineering to enhance the structural safety of buildings in large earthquakes. Efforts to improve the low cycle fatigue performance of SSPDs have focused mostly on the arrangement of the stiffeners or on the effects of the material properties. The shape of the SSPD plate has not been well investigated. This paper presents a shape optimization method for improving the low cycle fatigue performance of SSPDs. The shear plate shape of the SSPD is taken as the variable in the optimization process. The low cycle fatigue performance of the SSPD is assumed to have a negative relationship to the maximum equivalent plastic strain in the cyclic loading process. The equivalent plastic strains are obtained using the finite element software ABAQUS. The simulated annealing method is adopted for the optimization, which is capable of solving optimization problems involving strong nonlinear systems. In the optimization, four types of SSPDs with different aspect were modeled and the optimal shape of the SSPD for each case was derived. It can be found that the low cycle fatigue performance of the SSPD was significantly improved and the global optimal solution showed better performance compared to the local optimal solution.