The recent seismic events occurred in various regions of the Mediterranean basin resulted in significant damage in terms of both economic losses and casualties. The joint interest of the scientific and industrial communities in finding efficient strategies of seismic strengthening led to the development of several technical solutions for passive control to be possibly adopted in seismic retrofitting of existing structures. Particularly, various alternative solutions for realising dissipative components either eccentric or concentric steel bracing systems are currently available.

Within this context, an experimental campaign has been performed at the Laboratory of Materials & Structures (LMS) of the University of Salerno (UniSA) on an novel device which can be used as a link element in Y-shaped eccentric braces possibly designed to retrofit existing RC structures. The device under consideration dissipates energy by yielding under torsional actions. The tests carried out at LMS of UniSA showed a very high performance in terms of: a) fatigue strength; b) post-elastic behavior; c) stability and width of the hysteresis cycles shown during the tests.

Finally, the numerical analyses carried out to simulate the experimentally observed behaviour highlighted the possibility of a modular design which enables such devices to be employed for a wide range of building types characterised by design requirements.