Seismic reliability analysis of hysteretic structure with viscoelastic dampers

This paper presents a framework for performing seismic reliability analysis of hysteretic structure–viscoelastic damper systems with and without parameter uncertainties. The dynamic response of a hysteretic shear beam type structure with viscoelastic dampers under random seismic excitation is first evaluated in the state space utilizing stochastic response analysis and equivalent linearization technique. By taking the maximum story drift as a measure of structure limit state and the maximum deformation of viscoelastic material as a measure of damper limit state, the failure probabilities of the structure and viscoelastic dampers either for a given earthquake event or during the entire service time are then estimated using the first-order reliability method and the response surface approach for the system with and without uncertainties, respectively. Finally, the framework is applied to a ten-story building with and without viscoelastic dampers and parameter uncertainties. It is found that the existence of uncertainties reduces the reliability of the building but the installation of viscoelastic dampers of proper parameters significantly enhances the reliability of the building.