Experimental test of welded wide flange fuses

Metallic dampers are one of the most prevalent structural components that are used to dissipate earthquake energy. A novel metallic damper, named Welded Wide Flange Fuse (WWFF), is proposed in this paper. WWFF utilizes commonly available welded wide flange sections to dissipate the earthquake energy through shear yielding of the web in the longitudinal direction, which makes the WWFF easy to be fabricated and efficient in providing high elastic stiffness and stable energy dissipation capacity. In this paper, a detailed experimental study was conducted to examine the influence on the design parameters (such as aspect ratios and slenderness ratios) on the component response (such as yielding force and elastic stiffness). The result shows that the WWFF has stable energy dissipation capacity which can be used as an efficient and robust metallic damper. © 2018 Trans Tech Publications, Switzerland.