Energy Dissipation Control of Hysteretic Dampers

The efficiency of a damper depends on the amount of energy dissipation during a typical cycle experienced by the damper. For viscous dampers this leads to substantial frequency dependence, and typically implies that optimal tuning of a passive viscous damper is valid only for a particular mode. In contrast the energy dissipated by a hysteretic damper is independent of frequency, but depends on the amplitude and also contains a stiffness component.

The present paper presents a procedure for predicting the magnitude of the closed hysteresis loops and thereby the energy dissipation, and a procedure for on-line tuning of the damper properties for random response. The approach is illustrated for the bilinear elasto-plastic damper, where the optimal relation between yield level and displacement amplitude is derived.