Optimized Damping Device Configuration Design of a Steel Frame Structure Based on Building Performance Indices

Energy dissipation devices (EDDs) have been accepted as one of the viable strategies for enhancing the seismic performance of building structures. However, the current design provisions do not provide guidelines for optimizing the EDD configurations on structures. For many building structures an efficient configuration of EDDs may provide considerable performance improvement. Similarly, an optimized configuration may reduce the number of EDDs required to achieve a target performance objective. In this paper an existing building with added linear viscous dampers is redesigned based on different performance index optimization. The results indicate that the optimal device configurations are highly related to the dynamic properties of the structure and its required performance index. In one instance, where the cost is the major concern and a performance requirement is placed on story drift limitation, the total device damping coefficient can be reduced by 26%.