Performance-based wind design of tall buildings equipped with viscoelastic dampers

Viscoelastic dampers provide an effective mitigation strategy for the vibrations of tall buildings subjected to wind stochastic actions. In this paper, the Double Modal Transformation (DMT) method is employed to evaluate the response of tall buildings with viscoelastic dampers. The DMT method is applied in the frequency domain to reduce the computational cost associated with including the effects of viscoelastic dampers on the stochastic response of linear elastic models. This method is used within the general framework of performance- based wind engineering. As an application example, a simplified cantilever beam model with equivalent values of mass and stiffness is used to represent the undamped vibration of a tall building, while a combination of viscous and viscoelastic damping is used to describe the different sources of energy dissipation in the actual structure. The effects of the additional damping on selected response parameters are quantified, and the significance of key mechanical parameters characterizing the dampers is highlighted.