Analitycal study of viscous damper parameters at a simple reinforced concrete frame

Abstract

The energy dissipation process in the structure is caused by the earthquake load can be done by using bracing, base isolation and damper system. Damper is a device that is able to transform one form of energy into another form of energy. When a structure is experiencing vibration then the damper system can transform the energy from mechanical energy to other forms of energy. Viscous damper gives the damper force highly determined by the damping coefficient and relative velocity. In determining the capacity of the viscous damper is strongly influenced by several parameters of the damper consisting of the period of natural structure (T), damping coefficient (C), stiffness (K), relative velocity (V), and relative velocity coefficient (α). So that viscous dampers can reduce enormous earthquake energy significantly. In this paper, by using ground motion of Imperial Valley, the largest of damper force results obtained is 5.062 kN at T=0.128 s and and α=0.1, the smallest of story drift results obtained is 0.087 mm at T=0.128 s and α=0.1, and the largest of relative velocity results obtained is 107.6 mm/sec at T=0.621 s and α=1.5.