Development and seismic performance of precast rocking walls with multiple steel energy dissipaters

To enhance the repairability of lateral force resisting systems after earthquakes, a novel precast rocking wall with multiple steel energy dissipaters (PRW-MED) was devised, and a hierarchical energy dissipation (HED) mechanism was proposed based on this structure. Three quasistatic tests were conducted on the rocking wall specimens to evaluate the seismic performance of the PRW-MED. Simulations of the experiment were carried out in OpenSees software, and the influences of several parameters on the performance of the PRW-MED were investigated. The results indicated that the structure possessed excellent self-centering and deformation capabilities; the multiple dissipaters contributed sufficient energy dissipation capacity to the structure, and the parameters of the steel panel dampers (SPDs) exhibited significant effects on the seismic performance of the structure. Meanwhile, the experiment proved that the application of multi dissipaters led to the proposed HED mechanism. The parametric analysis demonstrated that the design parameters including initial stress of strands, thickness of SPD, and width of SPD etc. contributed significantly to the seismic performance of PRW-MED.