The innovative energy-absorbing damper hybrid of steel and GFRP rods

In the present study, a novel hybrid damper is introduced based on the combination of steel and glass-fibers reinforced-polymer (GFRP) rods. Sharing effort of the appropriate energy absorption properties of steel subjected to hysteretic loads and the GFRP rod reversibility due to their elastic behavior create a unique energy-absorbing system that, in addition to being economical, has a good efficiency during seismic excitations. In this research, at the first stage the materials have been tested to better understand their behaviors used in the fabrication and analytical modeling of proposed hybrid dampers and employed in numerical modeling to acquire more accurate results. Then several analytical models of damper were prepared and analyzed according to the various compositions of the materials. In the following, hybrid damper specimen has been fabricated and tested to obtain a good comparison of actual damper behavior and the results of numerical models. The results showed that the innovative hybrid dampers achieved good performance for their assigned tasks The ease of fabrication, availability of materials, and cost-effectiveness of the damper construction have distinguished the features of an economical and high-performance hybrid damper. The damper can be used as a convenient, reversible and economical energy absorbing system for the seismic control of structures in high risk earthquake prone areas.