Experimental beyond design and residual performances of full-scale viscoelastic dampers and their empirical modeling

Most past researches relevant to viscoelastic (VE) dampers, regardless of analytical and experimental ones, aimed at their design (or pre-damage) performance. In reality, however, under maximum considered or greater shaking caused by earthquakes, the shear deformation of the VE dampers installed in a structure may exceed or is even much larger than their nominal design range, thus leading to damage to the VE material. Under this circumstance, the structural design might become not conservative when the viscoelastically damped structure is a retrofit design or is not a supplemental damping design. Therefore, in this study, the beyond design and residual performances of the full-scale VE dampers after suffering damage are experimentally probed and compared with their design (or pre-damage) performance tested before. To have more engineering sense in practice, some suitable and conservative empirical post-damage models through considering reduction factors in the Kelvin-Voigt model for assessing the beyond design and residual performances of the full-scale VE dampers after suffering damage are recommended.