Analytical study on the seismic behavior of two adjacent buildings connected by viscous dampers

Connecting the adjacent buildings with dampers not only mitigates the structural response but also avoids pounding. In this paper, the seismic response of two adjacent buildings of fifteen and ten-story which are connected by a viscous damper are studied. Further optimization of the viscous dampers is carried out to get a better-mitigated response with less number of dampers. A comparison is done by considering the dampers which are underdamped and critically damped. The effectiveness of dampers in terms of the reduction of structural responses (i.e., displacements and base shear) of connected adjacent buildings is investigated. Results show that connecting the adjacent story buildings of different fundamental frequencies by these dampers can effectively reduce the earthquake-induced responses of either building. Results further show that critically damped dampers give better results than considered under damped dampers.