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Fluid Viscous Dampers
White Paper

116. Practical Design Procedure for Steel Moment Frames with Fluid Viscous Dampers

This paper outlines a practical design procedure for steel moment frames with fluid viscous dampers. The design procedure is being developed in accordance with International Code Council Evaluation Service (ICC-ES) AC 494, “Acceptance Criteria for Qualification of Building Seismic Performance of Alternative Seismic Force-Resisting Systems.” The new design procedure decouples the design of the moment frames and the damping system to minimize model complexity and design iteration. Notably, the design of the moment frames follows typical moment frame design procedures found in AISC 341 and ASCE/SEI-7 chapter 12, but with reduced strength and drift requirements to account for reduction in the seismic response provided by the damping system.
Through state-of-the-art FEMA P-695 incremental dynamic analysis on a suite of nearly 100 archetype designs, the design procedure is shown to produce steel moment frame designs that meet the seismic collapse safety requirements of FEMA P-695 and ASCE/SEI-7, while also significantly reducing steel tonnage when comparing to traditional steel moment frames.
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113. SM Structural Feature on 181 Freemont

From a Space Program Hall of Fame induction to one of the tallest, mixed-use buildings in San Francisco, Taylor Devices continues to provide the most efficient, effective and innovative structural protection products on the planet.
Case Study

108. Seismic Retrofit of the Tower of Hope – Preservation of a Masterwork of Mid-Century Modernism

The two frame office towers, constructed in the 1970s per the 1967 edition of the UBC, use perimeter reinforced concrete moment frames to resist seismic loading. The buildings are rectangular in plan and have certain characteristics that adversely affect their seismic performance, in particular the presence of a soft-story response at the first floor (approximately 50% taller than typical floors), and limited ductility typical of buildings of that era. Risk analysis showed that for the towers the PML exceeded 20%. Nonlinear response history analysis (NLRHA) of the towers was conducted and showed that in the existing configuration, the story drift ratios (SDRs) at the first floor exceeded 2%, shear hinging of the first floor beams was expected and that the SDRs would need to be reduced to approximately 1.4% for the first floor to limit the extent of nonlinear response. Seismic retrofit included addition of 300-kip viscous dampers in both directions to the first floor of the building.

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