An alternative practical design method for structures with viscoelastic dampers

Viscoelastic dampers（VEDs） are one of the most common passive control devices used in new and retrofit building projects which reduce the structure responses and dissipate seismic energy during an earthquake.Various methods to design this kind of dampers have been proposed based on the desired level of additional damping,eigenvalue assignment,modal strain energy,linear quadratic regulator control theories,and other approaches.In the current engineering practice,the popular method is the one based on the modal strain energy that uses the inter-story lateral stiffness as one of the main variables for damper design.However,depending on the configuration of the structure,in some cases the resulting interstory lateral stiffness can be very large.Consequently,the dampers size would also be large producing much more damping than that effectively necessary,resulting in an increase of the overall cost of the supplemental damping system and causing excessive stress on the structural elements connected to the dampers.In this paper an alternative practical design method for structures with VEDs is proposed.This method uses the inter-story shear forces as one of the main variables to accomplish the damper design compared to what was done in previous studies.Nonlinear time-history analyses were conducted on a 7-story reinforced concrete（RC） structure to check the reliability and effectiveness of the proposed method.Comparisons on the seismic performance between the structure without dampers and that equipped with VEDs were carried out.It is concluded that the proposed method results in a very suitable size of dampers,which are able to improve the performance of the structure at all levels of earthquake ground motions and satisfying the drift requirement prescribed in the codes.

Performance evaluation of low-rise infilled reinforced concrete frames designed by considering local effects on column shear demand

The interactions between reinforced concrete(RC)frames and infill walls play an important role in the seismic response of frames,particularly for low-rise frames.Infill walls can increase the overall lateral strength and stiffness of the frame owing to their high strength and stiffness.However,local wall-frame interactions can also lead to increased shear demand in the columns owing to the compressive diagonal strut force from the infill wall,which can result in failure or in serious situations,collapse.In this study,the effectiveness of a design strategy to consider the complex infill wall interaction was investigated.The approach was used to design example RC frames with infill walls in locations with different seismicity levels in Thailand.The performance of these frames was assessed using nonlinear static,and dynamic analyses.The performance of the frames and the failure modes were compared with those of frames designed without considering the infill wall or the local interactions.It was found that even though the overall responses of the buildings designed with and without consideration of the local interaction of the infill walls were similar in terms the overall lateral strength,the failure modes were different.The proposed method can eliminate the column shear failure from the building.Finally,the merits and limitations of this approach are discussed and summarized.