Parameters influencing the design of friction damped structures

This paper is concerned with a study of the parameters influencing the seismic design of structures fitted with friction dampers. For the efficient design of such systems, the slip load distribution which minimizes structural response during a major earthquake must be determined for the dampers; this distribution is referred to herein as the optimum slip load distribution. A simple procedure is presented for establishing this basic design parameter. An analogy is first made between a single-storey friction damped structure and a simple nonlinear mechanical system. The response of this system to sinusoidal base excitation is then computed using an existing analytical solution. The solution clearly shows that the optimum slip load of the analogous friction damped structure depends on the amplitude and frequency of the ground motion and is not strictly a structural property. By extension, the optimum slip load distribution of a multistorey friction damped structure will be influenced by the characteristics o...