Seismic Response of Adjacent Buildings Connected with Friction Dampers

The effectiveness of passive energy dissipation systems to improve seismic performance of connected buildings is now well established through extensive analytical and experimental investigations. However, the performance of buildings connected with friction dampers has not been looked into. In this paper, the investigation is carried out to study the structural responses of two adjacent buildings connected with friction dampers under various earthquake excitations. A formulation of the equations of motion for the two adjacent multi degree of freedom (MDOF) buildings connected with friction dampers is presented. The numerical study is carried out in two parts, namely (i) two adjacent MDOF buildings connected with friction dampers having same slip force in all the dampers and (ii) two adjacent MDOF buildings connected with friction dampers having different slip forces in the dampers. The effectiveness of the dampers in terms of the reduction of structural responses, namely, displacement, acceleration and shear forces of connected adjacent buildings is investigated. A parametric study is also conducted to investigate the optimum slip force of the dampers. In addition, the optimal placement of the dampers, rather than providing the dampers at all the floor levels is also studied to minimize the cost of the dampers. Results show that using friction dampers to connect the adjacent buildings of different fundamental frequencies can effectively reduce earthquake-induced responses of either building if slip force of the dampers is appropriately selected. Also, it is not necessary to connect the two adjacent buildings at all floors but lesser dampers at appropriate locations can significantly reduce the earthquake response of the combined system. Further, it is also observed that the reduction in the responses when the two MDOF buildings connected with 50% of the total dampers is almost as much as when they are connected at all the floors, thereby reducing the cost of the dampers significantly.