• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.155-162
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• 2001

In this study a structure with viscoelastic and viscous dampers with identical damping coefficient subjected to stationary seismic and wind load were analyzed in time and frequency-domain to compare motion control capability of viscous and viscoelastic dampers. The dampers were placed based on story drift and acceleration obtained from RMS responses. According to the analysis results, the motion control capability of viscous dampers turned out to be superior to that of the viscoelastic dampers for the case of seismic load. On the contrary, in case of wind load, the viscoelastic dampers were more effective in the mitigation of dynamic responses. However, it was also found that the differences were in a narrow margin.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.487-497
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• 2020

During the last few decades, fluid viscous dampers have been significantly improved in terms of performance and reliability. Viscous dampers dissipate the input energy into heat and the increased temperature may damage internal seals of the damper. As a result, thermal compensation is crucial for almost all fluid viscous dampers. In this study, while referring to the main working principles of the recently developed bypass viscous damper in Iran, a comprehensive case study is conducted on a RC building having diagonal braces equipped with such viscous dampers. Experimental results of a small-scale bypass viscous damper is presented and it is shown that the currently available simplified Maxwell models can simulate behavior of the bypass viscous damper with good accuracy. Using a case study, contribution of bypass viscous dampers to seismic behavior of structural and non-structural elements are investigated. A designed procedure is adopted to increase damping ratio of the building from 3% to 15%. In this way, reductions of 25% and 13% in the required concrete and steel rebar materials have been achieved. From nonlinear time history analyses, it is observed that bypass viscous dampers can greatly improve seismic behavior of structural elements and non-structural elements.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2001.04a
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• pp.379-386
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• 2001

Fluid viscous dampers have been used as energy dissipators or STU's (Shock Transmission Unit) in earthquake resistant designs for bridges. Viscous dampers have many advantages compared to other friction type or visco-elastic type of dampers. They do neither increase internal pier forces due to their out of phase response, nor produce reaction forces at the low velocities associated with thermal movements. Therefore, they anable the super structure to restore itself perfectly after a severe movement dut to seismic excitations. This paper investigates the response of bridges designed with viscous dampers in regard to damping coefficients, properties of dampers, and arrangements of dampers. For this purpose, time-history dynamic analyses have been performed using a very simple model relevant to a typical bridge example. Based on the results, it presents some design duidelines on how to determine a proper damping ratio and on how to arrange dampers. In usual cases, damping coefficients corresponding to about 0.2-0.3 of damping ratios seem to be very effective in bridge designs.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.1293-1309
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• 2015

3D two adjacent buildings with different heights founded in different kinds of soil connected with viscous dampers groups, with especial arrangement in plane, were investigated. Soil structure interaction for three different kinds of soil (stiff, medium and soft) were modeled as 3D Winkler model to give the realistic behavior of adjacent buildings connected with viscous dampers under various earthquake excitations taking in the account the effect of different kinds of soil beneath the buildings, using SAP2000n to model the whole system. A range of soil properties and soil damping characteristics are chosen which gives broad picture of connected structures system behavior resulted from the influence soil-structure interaction. Its conclusion that the response of connected structures system founded on soft soil are more critical than those founded on stiff soil. The behavior of connected structures is different from those with fixed base bigger by nearly 20%, and the efficiency of viscous dampers connecting the two adjacent buildings is reduced by nearly 25% less than those founded on stiff soil.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.669-675
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• 2018

Under braking forces of a freight train, there are great longitudinal structural responses of a large freight railway cable-stayed bridge. To alleviate such adverse reactions, viscous dampers are required, whose parametric selection is one of important and arduous researches. Based on the longitudinal dynamics vehicle model, responses of a cable-stayed bridge are investigated under various cases. It shows that there is a notable effect of initial braking speeds and locations of a freight train on the structural responses. Under the most unfavorable braking condition, the parameter sensitivity analyses of viscous dampers are systematically performed. Meanwhile, a mixing method called BPNN-NSGA-II, combining the Back Propagation neural network (BPNN) and Non-Dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm With Elitist Strategy (NSGA-II), is employed to optimize parameters of viscous dampers. The result shows that: 1. the relationships between the parameters of viscous dampers and the key longitudinal responses of the bridge are high nonlinear, which are completely different from each other; 2. the longitudinal displacement of the bridge main girder significantly decreases by the optimized viscous dampers.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.191-204
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• 2019

Near-field earthquake records including long-period high-amplitude velocity pulses can cause large isolation system displacements leading to buckling or rupture of isolators. In such cases, providing supplemental damping in the isolation system has been proposed as a solution. However, it is known that linear viscous dampers can reduce base displacements in case of near-field earthquakes but at the potential expense of increased superstructure response in case of far-field earthquakes. But can non-linear dampers with different levels of non-linearity offer a superior seismic performance? In order to answer this question, the effectiveness of non-linear viscous dampers in reducing isolator displacements and its effects on the superstructure response are investigated. A comparison with linear viscous dampers via time history analysis is done using a base-isolated benchmark building model under historical near-field and far-field earthquake records for a wide range of different levels of non-linearity and supplemental damping. The results show that the non-linearity level and the amount of supplemental damping play important roles in reducing base displacements effectively. Although use of non-linear supplemental dampers may cause superstructure response amplification in case of far-field earthquakes, this negative effect may be avoided or even reduced by using appropriate combinations of non-linearity level and supplemental damping.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.297-321
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• 2011

The seismic design of a two-storey precast reinforced-concrete building structure equipped with viscous dampers is presented in this paper with twofold purpose. The first goal is to verify the applicability of a practical procedure for the identification of the mechanical characteristics of the viscous dampers which allow to achieve target performance levels, originally proposed by the authors for moment-resisting building frames, also with reference to "pendular" structures. The second goal is to investigate the effectiveness of the use of viscous dampers (as compared with traditional lateral-resisting stiff braces) for the seismic design of precast not moment-resisting concrete structures.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.55 no.6
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• pp.1241-1260
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• 2015

Any rational approach to define the configuration and size of viscous fluid dampers in a structure should be based on the dynamic properties of the system with the dampers. In this paper we propose an alternative representation of the complex eigenvalues of multi degree of freedom systems with dampers to calculate new equivalent natural frequencies. Analytical expressions for the dynamic properties of a two-story building model with a linear viscous damper in the first floor (i.e. with a non-proportional damping matrix) are derived. The formulas permit to obtain the equivalent damping ratios and equivalent natural frequencies for all the modes as a function of the mass, stiffness and damping coefficient for underdamped and overdamped systems. It is shown that the commonly used formula to define the equivalent natural frequency is not applicable for this type of system and for others where the damping matrix is not proportional to the mass matrix, stiffness matrix or both. Moreover, the new expressions for the equivalent natural frequencies expose a novel phenomenon; the use of viscous fluid dampers can modify the vibration frequencies of the structure. The significance of the new equivalent natural frequencies is expounded by means of a simulated free vibration test. The proposed approach may offer a new perspective to study the effect of viscous dampers on the dynamic properties of a structure.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2000.10a
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• pp.399-406
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• 2000

Viscous dampers have been utilized as bearings and STU`s (Shock Transmission Unit) in earthquake resistant designs for bridges. Some viscous dampers are used as energy dissipators on one hand, but some dampers such as STU`s are used as fixing devices during an earthquake on the other hand. This paper discusses the effect of viscous dampers on the response of bridge with respect to the magnitude of damping coefficients. For this purpose, a typical bridge was taken as an example, and time-history dynamic analysis have been carried out. The input seismic data used in the analyses are relevant to the response spectra in the Koreans design code. The results show that there is an optimum value of coefficient considered most effective in the design. A STU with a large value of coefficient seems to make its support fixed. The response of the bridge is not much sensitive to the variation of the damping coefficients.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.59 no.5
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• pp.821-840
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• 2016

A simple design process is proposed for supplemental viscous dampers based on structural safety redundancy. In this process, the safety redundancy of the primary structure without a damper is assessed by the capacity and response spectra. The required damping ratio that should be provided by the supplemental dampers is estimated by taking the structural safety redundancy as a design target. The arrangement of dampers is determined according to the drift distribution obtained by performing pushover analysis. A benchmark model is used to illustrate and verify the validity of this design process. The results show that the structural safety redundancy of the structure provided by the viscous dampers increases to approximately twice that of the structure without a damper and is close to the design target. Compared with the existing design methods, the proposed process can estimate the elastic-plastic response of a structure more easily by using static calculation, and determine the required damping ratio more directly without iterative calculation or graphical process. It can be concluded that the proposed process is simple and effective.