Dynamic substructuring tests of steel frames equipped with easily repairable dissipative seismic devices

Civil structures have always been important and strategic resources for the community and, nowadays, it is clear that how to build and maintain such structures is a relevant aspect from the economical and environmental point of view. In this perspective, the protection from earthquakes that might bring to catastrophic disasters actually represents a critical point and an important challenge. In this respect, the aim for building structures to be resilient has become a crucial purpose for civil engineers, but while fragile collapse is easily avoidable through the capacity design, the post disaster restoration is still far from being economic and environmentally sustainable. Therefore, the strategy of avoiding fragile structural collapse has to be enlarged to reduce or totally avoid structural damage. This is the purpose of DISSIPABLE, an ongoing European research project, that, in the context of steel structures, aims to test structural components that can be easily replaced, Dissipative Replaceable Devices (DRD), after getting damaged by strong earthquakes so as to give full post-earthquake functionality to the structure. Within DISSIPABLE, buildings equipped with such devices are studied and experimentally tested. In particular, this paper focuses on the design of the experimental tests to be conducted at the University of Trento through dynamic substructing technique. Thus, the features of the dissipative devices and their numerical modelling will be thoroughly described. Then, the procedure to achieve meaningful substructures to be selected as experimental specimens starting from building prototypes will be presented.