Equivalent damping of SDOF structure with Maxwell damper

To predict the maximum earthquake response of an SDOF structure with a Maxwell fluid damper or supplemental brace-viscous damper system using the seismic design response spectrum technique,a new approach is presented to determine the first-and second-order equivalent viscous damping and stiffness,the peak responses,and the damper force of the above structure.Based on the fact that the dynamic characteristics of a general linear viscoelastically damped structure are fully determined by its free vibration properties and the relaxation time constants of a Maxwell fluid damper and supplemental brace-viscous damper system in engineering practice are all small,the method of improved multiple time scales and the equivalent criterion in which all free vibration properties are the same are used to obtain the first-and second-order equivalent viscous damping and stiffness of the above structure in closed form.The accuracy of the proposed method is higher and significantly better than that of the modal strain energy method.Furthermore,in the parametric range of the requirements of the Chinese ＂Code for Seismic Design of Buildings＂,the error of the proposed second-order equivalent system for the abovementioned engineering structure is not more than 0.5%.

Experimental studies on behavior of fully grouted reinforced-concrete masonry shear walls

An experimental study is conducted on fully grouted reinforced masonry shear walls (RMSWs) made from concrete blocks with a new configuration. Ten RMSWs are tested under reversed cyclic lateral load to investigate the influence of different reinforcements and applied axial stress values on their seismic behavior. The results show that flexural strength increases with the applied axial stress, and shear strength dominated by diagonal cracking increases with both the amount of horizontal reinforcement and applied axial stress. Yield displacement, ductility, and energy dissipation capability can be improved substantially by increasing the amount of horizontal reinforcement. The critical parameters for the walls are derived from the experiment: displacement ductility values corresponding to 15% strength degradation of the walls reach up to 2.6 and 4.5 in the shear and flexure failure modes, respectively; stiffness values of flexure- and shear-dominated walls rapidly degrade to 17%–19% and 48%–57% of initial stiffness at 0.50 Dmax (displacement at peak load). The experiment suggests that RMSWs could be assigned a higher damping ratio (～14%) for collapse prevention design and a lower damping value (～7%) for a fully operational limit state or serviceability limit state.

A discretely damped SDOF model for the rocking response of freestanding blocks

This paper presents a single-degree-of-freedom(SDOF)constitutive model for assessing the performance of freestanding block contents of buildings.The model incorporates a bespoke damper to account for energy dissipation associated with rocking.It is advantageous in its direct correlation,via energy conservation,to the restitution coefficient for impact during rocking.A comparative study with the existing SDOF rocking models shows that the proposed model significantly improves the accuracy of free-rocking simulations,in which inherent damping predominantly affects response.It provides a promising and efficient tool for computationally intensive performance evaluation of nonstructural components.