Experimental Method on Viscous Damping Wall by Shaking Table Test

Abstract:

Viscous damping wall is a kind of velocity dependent damper, and relies on shear deformation of viscous material to dissipate energy. The traditional experimental method of loading for the viscous damping wall is to adopt highspeed actuator, demand of which is much high. In order to reduce the cost of the experiment, a new experimental method is proposed, that the viscous damping wall is loaded by a shaking table, which is more common. In the experimental model, the horizontal force is totally resisted by the viscous damping wall without additional lateral resisting members; the horizontal force is produced by the inertial effect of a balance weight installed upon the inner steel plate of the viscous damping wall; the selfweight of the balance weight is transferred to complimentary bearing members by rollers. Meanwhile, a datum fitting and processing method of high accuracy is proposed to acquire indirectly the hysteretic curve of the viscous damping wall. A small scaled model was designed, made and tested, showing satisfactory results, validating the accuracy of the proposed experimental method. Finally, design recommendations were given for the proposed experimental method with the derived formulae of dynamics.