Seismic Response Control of Structure using Passive Damping Devices

Abstract

Earthquake is one of the disastrous natural hazards that has affected the countless cities and continents. Man-made structures are predominantly affected by earthquake; hence it is a necessity to make the structure earthquake resistant to control the damage in terms of losses of lives and structural damage. Various type of structures like RC, Steel, masonry etc. are effected under the Earthquake event. More research is carried in RCC and masonry for earthquake resistance design. It’s a long believed misconception that the steel structures have a good ductility and strength pertaining to seismic response. But after the North ridge and Kobe earthquake, scenario has changed. One of the major learning from Northridge and Kobe earthquakes are that apart from the existing codal provision to make the structure earthquake resistant we need some modern approaches to make the structure more resilient. To fulfil more resilience, requirement of structures, many mechanisms have been developed. Researcher are working on different structural system, bracing system, Seismic fuse, addition of dampers etc. These devices can be classified in two manners: - Increment of stiffness and addition of Dampers. out of which Damping devices can be classified in i.e. Base isolation, Passive Control devices and Active control devices. The Passive control devices are more economical and feasible compared to other two. As inherent damping of Steel structure is as low as 2 %, External energy dissipation devices can be used to absorb the energy. The present study is a sincere attempt to understand the fundamentals of various Passive Damping Devices. It includes the development and fabrication of economical and feasible Passive control devices. These devices are tested under the existing facility of the cyclic loading in the civil engineering Department. The characterization of the developed devices with various experimental parameters such sustainable loading, change in displacement rate with fixed amplitude and change in amplitude with Gradual incremental loading is undertaken. It also includes the characterization of spring friction damper through the experiment in which change in stiffness of spring is one of the variant. Another type of the study is undertaken to characterize modified piston damper which is made with PVC pipe. Study also includes the implementation of developed Passive damping devices to RC structures through numerical tools and assess the response of the structure under Kobe earthquake time history. This Study also contains the testing and assessment of the response of damper with Portal Frame under cyclic as well as static loading. Characterization of all damper shows good hysteresis behaviour under triangular cyclic loading. It also found that damping devices exhibits good performance when implement in the structure.