Energy dissipation systems are being increasingly employed in the United St
ates to provide enhanced seismic protection for new and retrofit building a
nd bridge construction. The hardware utilized includes yielding steel devic
es, friction devices, viscoelastic solid devices, and mostly, so far, fluid
viscous devices. This hardware has been used in either diagonal or chevron
brace configurations. This paper presents three new configurations that ut
ilize toggle-brace mechanisms to substantially magnify the effect of dampin
g devices so that they can be utilized effectively in applications of small
structural drift. Shake table testing of a large scale steel model structu
re and analysis are used to demonstrate the utility of these configurations
. The experimental results demonstrate substantial increases in the damping
ratio despite the use of small size damping devices, and, accordingly, sig
nificant attenuation of the seismic response of the tested stiff structure
is observed. Moreover, the experimental results are found to be consistent
with analytical predictions based on either simplified methods or response
history analysis. Applications of the new configurations are briefly descri
bed.