EACS 2016 Paper No. 155
This study focuses on verifying the effectiveness of the nonlinear power-law damping system on reduction of the vibration of base-isolated buildings with semi-actively implemented dampers over the ranges of resonance frequencies without causing detrimental effects over other frequency ranges. To verify the effctiveness of the proposed power-law damping system, shaking-table tests on a small-scale two-story physical building model are conducted. Random ground motions are used as the input excitations. The physical building model is equipped with a semi-active oil damper whose damping coeffcient can be varied over four different values. This provides an effective mechanism for semi-actively implementing the power-law damping system. The shaking-table tests have demonstrated the effectiveness and robustness of the power-law damping and indicated that this can be a more practical solution to improving the performance of building base-isolation systems.
