Year

2009

Degree Name

Master of Engineering - Research

Department

School of Civil, Mining and Environmental Engineering

Abstract

Building structures are often built close to each other because of lack of available land in metropolitan cities. To reduce the response of a structure to earthquake excitation, various types of control system devices have been proposed for adjacent buildings. One of the methods to mitigate structural seismic response is installing supplemental damping devices between adjacent buildings. This study proposes to develop a method for analyzing the random seismic response of a structural system consisting of two adjacent buildings interconnected by fluid viscous damping devices. The reduction of displacement, acceleration and shear force responses of adjacent buildings are proposed in this study, using fluid viscous dampers for adjacent buildings. The specific objectives of this study are carried out in three parts. Firstly, dynamic equations to formulate the equations of motion for two adjacent buildings connected with fluid viscous dampers in both two and multi degree of freedom systems are written by drawing the free body diagrams for the lumped masses. Secondly, the effectiveness of fluid viscous dampers with two damping coefficients in consideration of the three-dimensional vibration mitigation analysis is investigated when the dampers are connected at all the floors in the adjacent structures subjected the El Centro 1940, the Kobe 1995, the Northridge 1994 and the Loma Prieta 1989 ground excitations for NS and EW directions, using both a response spectrum analysis and a time-history analysis. Finally, the optimal placement of the fluid viscous dampers instead of placing them at all the floors in order to minimize the cost of the dampers is studied in this study. The results of thisstudy demonstrate that the fluid damper of parameters derived based on two damping coefficients is beneficial to reduce the responses of the adjacent structures under the selected earthquakes. Further, the diagonal location of fluid viscous dampers provides the reduction of displacement, acceleration and shear force responses of adjacent buildings in NS and EW directions. The Analysis results of this study show that placing fluid viscous dampers at selected floors will result in a more efficient structural system to mitigate earthquake effects. Keywords: Adjacent buildings; Fluid viscous damper; Earthquake excitations; A time-history analysis; Parametric study

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Unless otherwise indicated, the views expressed in this thesis are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the University of Wollongong.