Development of a volumetric compression restrainer for structures subjected to vibration

Abstract

In the last 2 decades, application of viscous dampers as restrainer device (lock-up) in buildings and bridges to diminish harmful effect of vibrations. However, leakage issue in the viscous luck-up devices requires regular expensive maintenance procedure to prevent device performance failure and many researchers are encouraged to find an alternative system with low maintenance cost. Therefore, in this study the Volumetric Compression Restrainer (VCR) device has been developed as a new effective restrainer system using hyper-elastic rubber material. The VCR device is consisted of multi hyperelastic rubber tubes which positioned within steel cylinder with core and applicable in the structures as vibration resistance system. To develop VCR device, the primary design details are derived and the behavior of proposed VCR subjected to various dynamic load conditions has been assessed through the finite element simulation. In order to define the hyper-elastic characteristics of the rubber material for finite element modeling, the hyperelastic rubber material with 3 different hardness properties have been tested experimentally. Then in the next step, the rubber test data were used to develop the analytical model for the VCR device. So, the performance of the VCR device was determined by applying cyclic load to the developed FEM model. Afterwards, multiple prototypes of VCR devices have been manufactured with four different rubber hardness properties and two different configurations and a series of experimental tests have been conducted to validate the device performance.Then, a three-story concrete frame equipped with supplementary VCR device subjected to seismic loads is considered and the performance of VCR and its efficiency to diminish vibration effect are evaluated. Besides, the hybrid population-based algorithm (PSOGSA) is implemented to optimize design of structure equipped with VCR device under applied earthquake excitation. The results revealed that by implementing VCR device as supplementary restrainer system in the frame structure, lateral displacement is reduced in range of 31.5–61.2% compared to the bare structures which is proving the efficiency of developed VCR device to protect the structures against severer dynamic loads.