Brace On Demand (BOD)
Steel braced frame systems offer a cost-effective solution to meet inter-story
drift criterion in seismic building design. The seismic design procedures for
the welded end-slot buckling restrained brace (WES-BRBs) and its connections
have been developed in the National Center for Research on Earthquake
Engineering (NCREE). An innovative cloud service named Brace On Demand (BOD) has
been constructed in NCREE. The BOD server hosted in NCREE provides the
up-to-date and on-demand service for users to effectively find the complete
design of the WES-BRBs and connections meeting all seismic design requirements.
Users are only required to enter the frame geometry and the BRB yield strength
in the BOD browser, then the BOD server can immediately compute and report the
results including all the detailed dimensions of the WES-BRB, gussets and
welding. The BOD is able to provide a very time-saving and cost-effective tool
for structural engineers in the seismic design of building projects using
WES-BRBs.
Welded End-Slot Buckling Restrained Brace (WES-BRB)
The welded BRB end connection can be cost-effective as it completely avoids the
use of bolts and the connection plates. In addition, it can be found that the
welded BRB connection details is more compact, and the connection length is
significantly shorter than that required in the BRBs using bolted end connection
details. This could improve the stability of the brace end outside the steel
casing. The WES-BRBs have been developed and adopted in several test programs
and new building constructions.