Damping effect on seismic input energy and its verification by shake table tests

Seismic input energy per unit mass (E_I/m) imparted into a structure is a function of earthquake (duration, frequency content, amplitude etc.), soil (shear velocity, dominant period etc.) and the structural (vibrational periods etc.) characteristics. Generally, the damping properties of the structure is assumed negligible for seismic input energy. Most of the existing spectral equations derived for SDOF systems generally use a constant damping ratio of 5%. In this study, the damping effect on E_I/m is investigated experimentally and numerically on SDOF systems with distinct damping ratios. Experimental investigation and numerical computations proved that seismic input energy is very sensitive to variation of damping within the vicinity of fundamental frequencies. Specifically, up to 50% increment was observed in the plateau region of the input energy spectrum, where maximum E_I/m values occur, by variation of damping from 2% to 10%. Hence, a novel damping modification factor (DMF), which could be utilized for existing energy spectra, is proposed in this paper. Validation studies of the proposed DMF are achieved through the various energy spectra found in the literature.