SEISMIC ENERGY ANALYSIS OF STRUCTURES WITH NONLINEAR FLUID VISCOUS DAMPERS – ALGORITHM AND NUMERICAL VERIFICATION

Published

June 1, 2011

Author(s)

Kevin K. Wong

Abstract

To protect structures from suffering significant damage during a major earthquake, fluid viscous dampers (FVDs) have been used in both newly constructed and seismically retrofitted structures to effectively reduce dynamic responses. The main benefit of installing FVDs into structures is to dissipate larger portions of earthquake induced energy through viscous damping, thereby decreasing energy dissipation demands on structural members, which in turn reduces structural damage. The objective of this paper is to propose a simple numerical algorithm for analyzing the dynamic response and energy transfer of inelastic structures with nonlinear FVDs. This numerical algorithm uses the state space method of dynamic analysis, an explicit time-stepping method that has proven to be both numerically accurate and time efficient, as well as the force analogy method to determine the inelasticity of structures and to quantify the corresponding plastic energy when inelastic structural behavior occurs. Numerical verification of the algorithm is performed by comparing nonlinear time history structural responses of using a linear FVD in a single degree of freedom system. Application of the algorithm on studying the effectiveness of installing FVDs with different nonlinear power law coefficients and damping coefficients are also investigated and presented.

Citation

Engineering Structures

Pub Type

Journals

Keywords

Force analogy method, state space method, plastic energy, input energy, damping energy, nonlinear power law, explicit, nonlinear analysis, dynamic analysis, response history analysis

Citation

Wong, K. (2011), SEISMIC ENERGY ANALYSIS OF STRUCTURES WITH NONLINEAR FLUID VISCOUS DAMPERS – ALGORITHM AND NUMERICAL VERIFICATION, Engineering Structures (Accessed May 4, 2026)

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