• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.3 no.6
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• pp.821-838
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• 2012

This paper proposes a new three-layer pillar-type hysteretic damper system for residential houses. The proposed vibration control system has braces, upper and lower frames and a damper unit including hysteretic dampers. The proposed vibration control system supplements the weaknesses of the previously proposed post-tensioning vibration control system in the damping efficiency and cumbersomeness of introducing a post-tension. The structural variables employed in the damper design are the stiffness ratio ${\kappa}$, the ductility ratio ${\mu}_a$, and the ratio ${\beta}$ of the damper's shear force to the maximum resistance. The hysteretic dampers are designed so that they exhibit the targeted damping capacity at a specified response amplitude. Element tests of hysteretic dampers are carried out to examine the mechanical property and to compare its restoring-force characteristic with that of the analytical model. Analytical studies using an equivalent linearization method and time-history response analysis are performed to investigate the damping performance of the proposed vibration control system. Free vibration tests using a full-scale model are conducted in order to verify the damping capacity and reliability of the proposed vibration control system. In this paper, the damping capacity of the proposed system is estimated by the logarithmic decrement method for the response amplitudes. The accuracy of the analytical models is evaluated through the comparison of the test results with those of analytical studies.