The earthquake response of building structures with energy absorbing dampers

Key, David Edwin (1986) The earthquake response of building structures with energy absorbing dampers. University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.

Abstract

The available methods of improving earthquake response are examined and the conclusion is drawn that two areas show sufficient promise to be worth examining in detail:- 1 Isolation of the structure from the foundation by soft mechanical elements such as rubber pads. 2 Adding mechanical energy absorbing dampers (EADs) to the structure. The study of these two approaches is combined in a general study of the use of EADs in building structures. The isolation method simply becomes a special case of the more general approach adopted. In order to get a general feel for the effectiveness of EADs a series of time domain analyses is made of a ten storey building, using various configurations of EADs, with and without soft elements introduced into the structure. The ground motions used are five simulated events generated for the same length of time and for the same site conditions. These show that useful results can be obtained without introducing soft elements, but that if these are introduced, considerably better results are obtained. It is also shown that the amount of damping used has an important influence on response and, especially where soft elements are used, shows a distinct optimum value. A new configuration shows a performance superior to that of more conventional isolation methods. Because the use of time domain analysis is not generally a viable proposition for design purposes, an alternative approach is developed using a new method of time modelled random vibration analysis, which can be applied to systems with a limited number of discrete non-linearities. This brings the computational resource required to a practical level so that optimisation of the various parameters can be achieved. Design studies are made of alternative types of building using EADs, including cost effectiveness, and the sensitivity of the design to possible variations which may occur in the design parameters used. The final design analysis is compared with results from recorded earthquake acceleration records.(D67954/86)

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