Numerical Analysis of Super-Tall Buildings with Replaceable Members

The concept of installing energy dissipation devices in a coupling beam of shear wall structures has been proposed and investigated. The energy dissipation device is used to dissipate seismic energy and is easy to be replaced in the post-earthquake event. According to the practical design methods of replaceable coupling beams, some selected conventional coupling beams installed replaceable energy dissipation devices. Two bench-mark models are built in ABAQUS program, one with conventional coupling beams (CBM model) while the other with replaceable coupling beams (NBM model). Modal analysis, response spectrum and earthquake time-history analysis are conducted to verify the advantage of replaceable coupling beams. It was found that the inter-story drift angle and damage of the NBM model was smaller than CBM model. Moreover, the damage of the replaceable coupling beams mainly concentrated in energy dissipation devices, while the other parts of replaceable coupling beams kept intact. In contrast, the conventional coupling beams produced irreversible damage, which is more difficult to restore after earthquake.