Crescent shaped braces for the seismic design of building structures

This paper introduces a special lateral-resisting element, herein referred to as Crescent Shaped Brace (CSB). CSBs are characterised by a geometrical configuration which is “ad hoc” defined in order to provide the structure with prescribed multiple seismic performances, within the performance based seismic design framework. In detail, the present work gives analytical, numerical and limited experimental results in order to provide a comprehensive understanding of the mechanical behaviour of these devices, with special attention devoted to the seismic design purposes.