Friction Tuned Mass Dampers in Seismic-Excited High-Rise Buildings with SSI Effects: A Reliability Assessment

The probabilistic performance of the seismic-excited structures supplemented with passive control devices has recently received attention. Friction tuned mass damper (FTMD) devise as a novel passive control device is inspired by the idea of the combination of the friction mechanism with the traditional tuned mass damper (TMD) device. Although the application of the FTMD device has recently been considered for seismic control of structures, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, a probabilistic reliability evaluation of the high-rise building equipped with FTMD under near-field earthquakes considering soil-structure interaction (SSI) effects has not yet been addressed in the literature. In the presence of uncertainties considered for the structural model, FTMD model, foundation and soil model, and stochastic near-fault ground motion model, the reliability analyses are carried out on a benchmark 40-story building equipped with FTMD considering SSI effects to estimate the failure probabilities of both structures with and without FTMD. Three soil types, three earthquake magnitudes, three fault distances, and three seismic performance levels which include 162 reliability analyses are considered for the extension of the study. Considering different near-fault earthquake model parameters, a total average reduction of 51.13%, 49.42%, and 17.50% is given for the maximum inter-story drift ratio response of the structure equipped with FTMD than the uncontrolled ones. It is found that ignoring the uncertainties may result in an inaccurate estimation of the seismic responses of the tall buildings especially those built on soft soil near faults. The results show that the FTMD passive device is not able to satisfy the requirements of the seismic codes at the performance level of immediate occupancy, especially in high earthquake magnitudes and structures built near the fault. However, for the seismic performance levels of life safety and collapse prevention, the FTMD reduces failure probabilities of the structures for most conditions of the earthquake magnitudes and fault distances. The efficiency of the FTMD in the reduction of failure probability is often declined by increasing the softness of soils, especially for severe earthquakes closer to the fault.