Plastic disconnection of storey masses for seismic stress control

The paper detects the role of affecting parameters in the performance of a stress control technique based on disconnecting seismic masses during strong earthquakes. Such a technique assumes that rigid-plastic connectors are inserted between structural and non-structural floor masses to detach portions of active mass as soon as a pre-set level of horizontal load is reached. By means of a wide numerical investigation on linear and non-linear single-storey frames acted upon by different strong recorded ground motions, the present paper highlights the ranges within which the governing parameters should be set to make the stress control effective. In view of a practical application of the considered technique, a simple procedure is also provided to derive the stress reduction from the EC8 design response spectrum for given values of the key parameters.