A new replaceable hysteretic damper to better control seismic building damage, consisting of two adjacent steel vertical elements connected to each other with continuous X-shaped mild/low strength steel shear links, is investigated in this study. New Dampers, called Dissipative Columns (DC), provide additional stiffness and damping to a lateral system by using a basic and minimally invasive construction element: the column. The Dissipative Column has been conceived or as a device installed within a frame either external damper to provide macro-dissipation. In fact, considering different configurations, a parametric analysis, based on FEM simulations, is developed in order to evaluate the effect of the main geometrical and structural parameters as well as provide the design capacity curves of this new damper. In particular, non-linear pushover and cyclic analyses have been carried out in ABAQUS in order to characterize the local and global behaviour of the device also considering different steel grades.
