Seismic behavior of structural and non-structural elements in RC building with bypass viscous dampers

During the last few decades, fluid viscous dampers have been significantly improved in terms of performance and reliability. Viscous dampers dissipate the input energy into heat and the increased temperature may damage internal seals of the damper. As a result, thermal compensation is crucial for almost all fluid viscous dampers. In this study, while referring to the main working principles of the recently developed bypass viscous damper in Iran, a comprehensive case study is conducted on a RC building having diagonal braces equipped with such viscous dampers. Experimental results of a small-scale bypass viscous damper is presented and it is shown that the currently available simplified Maxwell models can simulate behavior of the bypass viscous damper with good accuracy. Using a case study, contribution of bypass viscous dampers to seismic behavior of structural and non-structural elements are investigated. A designed procedure is adopted to increase damping ratio of the building from 3% to 15%. In this way, reductions of 25% and 13% in the required concrete and steel rebar materials have been achieved. From nonlinear time history analyses, it is observed that bypass viscous dampers can greatly improve seismic behavior of structural elements and non-structural elements.