Viscoelastic Dampers for Vibration Control of Building Structures: A State-of-Art Review

Due to its high effectiveness and low cost, viscoelastic damper (VED) is a commonly used type of passive energy dissipation device to reduce structural vibrations and responses against earthquakes and strong winds. Over the past decades, scholars have developed new types of VEDs to be installed at different structural locations. These VEDs offer better post-disaster recoverability and smarter behaviors for structures. Nonetheless, existing efforts of various VEDs and the technologies supporting VEDs were seldomly summarized. This article presents a critical state-of-art review of the existing research on VEDs, hybrid VED devices, and the design methods for structures installed with VEDs. First, the VEDs are classified based on the design locations in building structures, including VEDs used as coupling beams and damping walls, installed in braces and beam-column joints, and used to connect parallel structures. In addition to these classic VEDs, the study presents the high-performance VEDs and the corresponding techniques, such as the combined usage with other materials and/or devices. Furthermore, as an important contribution to the presented work, various design methods for structures enhanced by VEDs were systematically summarized. These methods considered different evaluation parameters aiming at different design targets. Finally, this article identifies and highlights research challenges in the existing studies. Possible improvements that could be made in the future were also provided.