Theoretical and Experimental Study of Viscoelastic Damper Based on Fractional Derivative Approach and Micromolecular Structures

Viscoelastic dampers are one of the most popular earthquake mitigation devices for building structures with a large number of applications in civil engineering. The seismic performance of viscoelastic dampers is greatly affected by viscoelastic materials. The present paper addresses the theoretical and experimental studies of the viscoelastic damper. The regular polyhedron chain network models for viscoelastic materials are proposed based on the molecular chain network microstructures and the temperature–frequency equivalent principle. Several dynamic property tests for the viscoelastic damper at different temperatures, frequencies, and displacements are carried out, and the proposed models are verified by comparing the numerical and experimental results. The comparisons show that the viscoelastic damper has perfect energy dissipation capacity, and the regular polyhedron chain network models can well describe the mechanical properties of the viscoelastic damper at different environmental temperatures and excitation frequencies.