École Nationale Supérieure de
Techniques Avancées

Abstract

Earthquakes appear periodically depending on their strength and new buildings are higher than before so it is necessary to model these structures to know their reliability against earthquakes. To model structural dynamics the usual software OpenSees is used. In order to study devices which improve this reliability, this report presents a research of an anti-seismic system : the viscous damper. At first, a model of a 2D frame with viscous damper is created and then an implementation of 6 viscous dampers on a numerical model of a complex structure, already created, is shown. The numerical model of the 2D frame with a viscous damper is coherent with the theory and could be used to study properties of the viscous damper. The implementation of 6 viscous dampers in the complex structure gives quite good results because the energy is mostly dissipated by the viscous dampers. A method which avoids plastic deformations has been tried due to the difficulty of calculating the plastic energy due to the plasticizing of the whole structure. The results are consistent with the behaviour of the structure and it proved the accuracy of the first results without avoiding plastic deformations. Hence it is valid to use it to study various configurations of viscous dampers in order to increase the reliability of the building.