Experimental study on seismic performance of prefabricated viscoelastic damping bolted joints

Aiming at the defect of insufficient bearing capacity of prefabricated concrete beam-column joint with bolted connection, a prefabricated viscoelastic damping bolted joint (VDBJ) is proposed with good seismic performance. The damping principle is based on that viscoelastic (VE) dampers can provide energy dissipation and additional stiffness for the structures. Three full-scale beam-column joint specimens were designed, including one cast-inplace joint specimen, one prefabricated bolted joint specimen without VE dampers and one prefabricated bolted joint specimen with VE dampers. Since the viscoelastic damper is a passive energy dissipation device with velocity correlation, comparison and analysis of three specimens under high-frequency cyclic loading are performed on the failure modes and seismic performance indexes such as hysteretic energy dissipation, displacement ductility, stiffness degradation and ultimate bearing capacity. The analysis of the test results indicate that the proposed prefabricated viscoelastic damping bolted joint has stronger ultimate bearing capacity and displacement ductility than the cast-in-place joint. The arrangement of VE dampers effectively controls the appearance and expansion of concrete cracks, which not only achieves the expected effect of shock absorption and energy dissipation, but also can realizes the rapid replacement of components after the earthquakes.