6. Experimental Study of Structures with Supplemental Damping
A quarter scale model of a three story steel moment frame building was tested on a shake table using time histories from a large number of earthquakes including Taft, El Centro, etc. Tests were conducted both without dampers and with varying numbers of dampers. Test results correlated well with the analytical predictions. Conclusions; viscous dampers reduced story drifts by 30% to 70%. These reductions are comparable to those achieved by other energy dissipating systems such as viscoelastic, friction and yielding steel dampers. However, the use of fluid dampers also reduced story shear forces by 40% to 70%, while other energy absorbing devices showed no significant reduction.