An analytical technique for the calculation of the lateral contact forces in
buckling-restrained braces (BRBs), proposed by Dehghani and Tremblay (2017), is
critically revised and improved. The resulting algorithm is implemented and adopted
with the only aim of highlighting what factors are important in the calculation of
the lateral thrust in BRBs. Many of these factors seem to have a marginal
importance in comparison with the buckled shape of the core, the core steel
constitutive law, and the stiffness of the retention profiles. Possible conclusions
deriving from this analysis are (i) only the calculation of analytical upper
and lower limits for the lateral thrust in BRBs may have a sense, but these
limits are always much distant from each other, and (ii) it is worthless trying
to adopt over-detailed calculation techniques for this important quantity.
