Passive strategies based on the introduction of energy dissipating devices into the structures have received considerable attention in recent years. Within this framework, as reliable and cheap energy-dissipation devices, viscous fluid dampers have been largely used in seismic protection of industrial machines, technical equipments, buildings and bridges. Since the versatility of this passive p...

Dampers can reduce structural response under dynamic loads. Since dampers are costly, the design of structures equipped with dampers should make their application economically justifiable. Among the effective cost reduction factors is optimal damper placement. Hence, this study intended to find the optimal viscous damper placement using efficient optimization methods. Taking into account the no...

This investigation is concerned with application of nonlinear fluid viscous dampers for asymmetric-plan systems. For this purpose, the behavior of nonlinear fluid viscous dampers is summarized first followed by the effects of damper nonlinearity on seismic response of asymmetric systems. It is shown that the peak force in nonlinear damper tends to be smaller compared to linear damper. However, ...

In last decades many strategies for seismic vulnerability mitigation of structures have been studied and experimented; in particular energy dissipation by external devices assumes a great importance for the relative simplicity and efficacy. Among all possible approaches the use of fluid viscous dampers are very interesting, because of their velocity-dependent behaviour and relatively low costs....

We describe a novel method for haptic synthesis of viscoelastic responses which employs a dual-channel haptic interface. It has motors that generate torque independently from velocity and brakes that generate viscous torque independently from position. This way, twice as many states are directly accessible, which reduces reliance on observation and feedback. Torquegenerating actuators, e.g. dc ...

This paper presents a dynamic nonlinear numerical simulation of a 5-story full-scale steel frame structure based on Perform-3D. Flexibility-based fiber element and Maxwell model are adopted for structure member simulation after a post analysis of the shaking table test of a 4-story full-scale steel frame. The author simulates the low cyclic reciprocating load test for the steel members with fib...

Magnetorheological (MR) dampers represent one of the most promising semi-active control devices for applications aiming at the seismic risk mitigation of new or existing civil structures. Two 30 kN MR dampers were experimentally tested subjecting them to assigned conventional displacement laws at their ends. The paper describes the main results of the above experimental activity and aims at imp...