The Seismic Response of Reinforced Concrete Structure with Viscous and Friction Damper

Dampers are the energy dissipating devices which resist lateral loads and displacement in reinforced concrete structures. Viscous and Friction dampers dissipate partially the earthquake energy into heat which is transferred in return into the atmosphere. In order to check the effectiveness of viscous and friction damper in reducing earthquakes effects, time history and pushover analysis are conducted into reinforced concrete buildings of different stories levels (five, ten and twenty stories) with and without both type of dampers. In addition, the performance of viscous damper is compared to that of friction damper to find the variation between both types of dampers in dissipating earthquake energy. This comparison is performed by implementing friction dampers in the same places which viscous damper are implemented on and by achieving same analysis methods done for structural buildings with and without viscous dampers. Furthermore, for finding the optimum location of dampers in external structural frame, viscous and friction dampers are placed in three different locations in outer frames for each story level during time history and pushover analysis. In other words, this study deals with studying the effectiveness of viscous and friction damper, comparing the performance of both types of dampers and finding the optimum locations of VD and FD in external frames. Viscous damper had the priority over Friction damper in improving the seismic response of structural building and the optimum location of dampers was the middle position of the outer frame.