Study on the performance of a gear‐driven rotation‐amplified rubber viscoelastic damper and its vibration control of a frame structure

Summary This paper presents an innovative gear‐driven rotation‐amplified rubber viscoelastic damper (GRRVD) to reduce the seismic shift responses of beam‐column connections in frame structures. Based on the principle of gear transmission, the damper can amplify the rotational deformation of the beam‐column joints of frame structures according to actual engineering needs and give full play to the energy dissipation capacity of rubber viscoelastic materials. First, the design philosophy, basic construction, working mechanism, and outstanding features of this damper are introduced. Then, cyclic loading test is carried out to study the influence of rotational deformation and loading frequency on the mechanical properties of the fabricated GRRVD. Additionally, a mechanical model which can precisely simulate the hysteretic characteristics of the damper is derived and then verified by numerical simulation. Finally, a nonlinear time history analysis is performed on a six‐story steel frame for three cases: no dampers, dampers without deformation amplification, and dampers with deformation amplified by a factor of 2.5. The results show that the control effect of the damper can be improved by two to four times by amplifying the rotational deformation response at the beam‐column joint by 2.5 times.