Viscoelastically Supported Viscous Mass Damper Incorporated into a Seismic Isolation System

This work discusses the application of a two-node apparent mass device, designated as an inerter, which generates inertial resistance forces proportional to relative accelerations between its two nodes, to seismic isolated civil structures. This study employs a viscous mass damper (VMD) consisting of an inerter and a viscous element in parallel arrangement. Although the use of a VMD is effective in reducing relative responses, previous studies have experienced excessive floor response accelerations because the inerter directly transmits ground accelerations to the superstructure. This work examines the acceleration reduction effect of a viscoelastic element arranged in series to the VMD for filtering out the higher frequency components of the ground motion accelerations.