Viscoelastic Material Constitutive Modeling and Efficient Placement Strategy of Viscoelastic Dampers for Aseismic Design of Buildings

Reinforced concrete (RC) shear walls are widely used in high-rise buildings. However, the RC beams between the shear walls are vulnerable to earthquakes. One viable solution is to substitute these RC beams with replaceable dampers, such as the viscoelastic coupling damper (VCD). This paper presents a comprehensive four-element constitutive model for representative viscoelastic materials (VEMs). The constitutive model can accurately capture the frequency- and temperature-dependent features of the VEMs. Based on the constitutive model, an efficient placement strategy is proposed for the VCDs. It is found that the proposed placement strategy can effectively improve the overall damping of the VCDs.