Experimental and numerical analysis of interface cohesive behavior on the viscoelastic damper under shear loading

The viscoelastic (VE) damper has been widely employed in isolation technology to mitigate the vibrations of engineering structures induced by earthquakes or winds. The VE damper is composed of steel plates and VE material which are chemically adhesive at contact surfaces and vulcanized through a high temperature. The performance degradation at the interface between the steel plate and VE material has a great impact on the mechanical properties of the VE damper at finite shear displacement and deserves more in-depth studies. In this work, the three-dimensional refined numerical model of the VE damper based on the bi-linear cohesive constitutive law is developed using the finite element software Abaqus. Experimental validations indicate the high feasibility of the developed model to represent the stiffness degradation behaviors of the VE damper under shear loading. The present work demonstrates the effectiveness of bi-linear cohesive constitutive law in dealing with the interface characteristics of the VE damper, and the wide application perspective of the developed model in engineering practice. •Bi-linear cohesive constitutive law to characterize the interface behavior of the VE damper.•The shear stress distribution at the interface of the VE damper is discussed.•The principle of stiffness degradation of the VE damper interface is proposed.