## 2 The Mechanism of the HES  
### General Concepts  
The equivalent in-cast connecting method is commonly used in traditional prefabricated shear wall systems which fails to restore the structural function once being damaged in the earthquake. The proposed HES mainly consists of the energy dissipation zone (ED), the stiffness lifting zone (SL) and the horizontal connecting zone (HC) as shown in Figure 2. The HES could horizontally connect two adjacent walls (Figure 2a), the steel plates in the ED zone and SL zone both utilize bolt connection which could be fast replaced after damage in the earthquake and the resilient structural performance is obviously enhanced. The low-yield-strength steel plates are employed in the ED zone mainly dissipating seismic energy. As depicted in Figure 2d-f, the SL zone is composed of the shear stiffness lifting plate, the flange plate, functional bolts, and the buckling restrained plates. The diameter of the functional bolt bar is set to be smaller than that of the circle hole in the shear stiffness lifting plate and this deviated value is the shear displacement threshold. By this threshold control system, the HES exhibits a controlled two-stage mechanical behavior. As depicted in Figure 2, the obvious shear deformation of the HES could be investigated when the in-plane lateral deformation of two adjacent walls are observed in the earthquake. In the first stage, when the shear displacement is smaller than the displacement threshold the functional bolts would not contact the shear stiffness lifting plate and the SL zone has no contribution to the performance of the HES, only the ED zone dissipating the input seismic energy. In the second stage, when the shear displacement is smaller than the displacement threshold, the SL zone would begin to work and the shear stiffness and bearing capacity of the HES increase again. The adjacent walls would be assembled again becoming a strengthening system and the lateral bearing capacity of shear wall system would increase again, which could protect the structure in the large and super-large earthquake.  
Figure 1: Design flow chart of the horizontal-connection and energy-dissipation structure (HES).  
The shear wall and the HES are assumed to be rigid pieces as shown in Figure 3. The deformation of the HES could be computed approximately by Equation (1) when achieving the horizontal displacement of shear walls.  
The drift ratio is a significant parameter defined in many specifications, which is utilized to evaluate structural performance. Therefore, the limited shear deformation of the HESs could be calculated.  
\[\Delta_{\mathrm{s}}=0.5\cdot\theta L=0.5\cdot\Delta_{hw}\cdot L/H \tag{1}\]  
where, \(\Delta_{hw}\) is the horizontal displacement of the shear wall, \(\Delta_{\mathrm{s}}\) is the shear deformation of the shear wall, \(\theta\) is the drift ratio, L is the width of the shear wall, H is the height of the shear wall.  
Figure 3: The shear deformation of the HES. (**a**) The boundary condition, (**b**) calculation shear deformation of the HES according to the drift displacement.  
Figure 2: Detailed instruction of the HES system. (**a**) The wall connection, (**b**) assembly model, (**c**) cross-section, (**d**) disassembled model, (**e**) lateral stiffness lifting zone, (**f**) threshold control system.