| Abstract: | A ductile cladding connection is a special connecting device between a facade cladding panel and a building structure that is designed to dissipate energy when subjected to an earthquake. The effect of such a device is to reduce the overall seismic response of the structure. A special testing machine was designed to test the behavior of these advanced cladding connections. The machine, which is specially suited for the recording and evaluation of ductility and damping properties, is described. Its main characteristics are both the ability to load a specimen in shear simultaneously in two orthogonal directions without inducing any axial stress, and the flexibility to test a wide variety of different damping mechanisms with different geometric configurations. The machine was used to test a family of advanced cladding connections that employs ductile flexural action to achieve high and stable levels of ductility for repeated cyclic load applications. A lumped-parameter mechanical model for these connections was identified from selected test data, and the predicted cyclic behavior was shown to agree well with test data. The model is simple and suitable for incorporation into nonlinear structural analysis programs. |
