Analysis of a high‐rise steel structure with viscous damped outriggers

Damped outriggers for tall buildings draw increasingly attentions to engineers. With a shaking table test, two models of a high‐rise steel column‐tube structure are established, one with outriggers fixed to the core and hinged at the columns, whereas the other's cantilevering outriggers are connected to columns by viscous dampers. According to their dynamic properties, five earthquake waves are selected from the Ground Motion Database of Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER), and two artificial waves are generated by software SIMQKE_GR. Under various peak ground accelerations (PGAs), nonlinear time‐history analysis is applied to compare structural elastic seismic responses, including accelerations, inter‐story drifts, base shear force, damper's response and additional damping ratios. It is concluded that under minor earthquakes, accelerations, inter‐story drifts and base shear force of structure with damped outriggers are larger than or nearly equal to those of the one with fixed outriggers, and the viscous dampers hardly work. But as PGA increases, the contrary situation happens, and the effect of viscous dampers is enhanced as well. The additional damping ratio reaches around 4% under mega earthquakes. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.