Design and Analysis of Viscoelastic Seismic Dampers

This paper describes a methodology of design and analysis of viscoelastic seismic dampers by means of the time domain finite element analysis. The viscoelastic constitutive relation of material incorporating with the fractional calculus has been derived and the finite element formulation based on the constitutive relation has been developed to analyze the dynamic property of seismic damper. A time domain computer program was developed by using the formulation. Dynamic properties of hysteresis loop, damping capacity, equivalent viscous damping coefficient, and equivalent spring constant are calculated and compared with the experimental results. Remarkable correlation between the FE analysis and the experiment is gained, and consequently the design procedure with the help of the FE analysis has been established.