This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program grant will pursue research to create new enhanced structural systems by strategically removing material (i.e. introducing engineered cutouts) in constituent steel plates. Structural systems subjected to extreme lateral loads due to earthquake or wind resist collapse when they can sustain large deformation without breaking. This property, known as ductility, protects the lives of inhabitants because buildings can deform without collapsing. Typical structural systems that rely on shear deformations in steel plates to develop ductility are challenged by shear buckling and the potential for fracture. This research attempts to revolutionize structural systems that rely on ductile shear deformations. The innovative approach is to improve ductility and energy dissipation ability by strategically removing material from the plates rather than adding more material. This project will develop cutout patterns, and the underlying science, to convert shear deformations into smaller ductile mechanisms that resist buckling. The new structural systems have the potential to improve the performance of the built environment when subjected to extreme lateral loads.
The project's approach involves converting global shear deformations into local ductile yielding mechanisms in a way that can resist buckling, develop increased stiffness, exhibit stable and full hysteretic behavior, and allow structural behavior to be tuned. The computational and experimental studies will lead to a new understanding of the mechanics of ring-shaped and yielding link hysteretic elements. Fundamental knowledge about approaches for creating ductile shear behavior will be discovered by 1) computationally exploring size, shape, and layout of cutouts for buckling resistant mechanisms, 2) developing methods to tune behavior, 3) validating concepts through small- and large-scale experiments, and 4) structural system level modeling. A related educational plan will inject visual demonstrations and hands-on activities into structural engineering curricula by 1) conducting and videotaping hands-on activities for K-12 outreach, 2) creating well-produced videos of the outreach activities, experiments, and key demonstrations, and then 3) creating an online warehouse for videos and instructions related to structural engineering.
