Viscoelastic damping for wind-excited motion of a five-story building frame

A 1/12 scale five-story full aeroelastic building model equipped with visco elastic dampers is designed and tested in a boundary layer wind tunnel to i nvestigate the effectiveness of viscoelastic dampers in suppressing wind-in duced building motion. The degree of reduction in free-decaying curves and RMS accelerations is used as a measure of effectiveness of added viscoelast ic dampers. Two different target damping levels, namely, 10% and 15% were p ursued by different dimensions but the same kind of viscoelastic material. Experimental results show that significant improvement of structural perfor mance under wind load can be realized with addition of viscoelastic dampers . Also the result of damper property tests show that when viscoelastic damp ers are applied to wind-excited buildings or structures, in particular the number of loading cycles and strain range during a severe wind event must b e taken into account. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All right s reserved.