Experimental study of seismic response reduction effects of particle damper using substructure shake table testing method

In order to evaluate the effectiveness of particle dampers (PDs) on seismic response reduction of structures, a series of substructure shake table tests have been conducted. A new family of explicit model-based integration algorithms is used to develop the substructure shake table testing (SSTT) method. To implement the SSTT method, a testing system on the basis of the Quanser shake table II is constructed. The effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed SSTT method and the testing system are verified by comparing the results of complete structure shake table tests and the corresponding substructure shake table tests. Mass ratio, which is defined as the ratio of the damper mass to the structural mass and structural damping ratio are taken as two main parameters in the parametric analyses. Twelve cases of PDs, which are categorized into three patterns, with different materials, sizes, and amounts of particles are selected as the experimental substructures. The substructure shake table test results indicate that the overall seismic response reduction effects of three different types of PDs are very close with same mass ratio. Two seismic response reduction ratios in terms of reducing peak and root-mean-square relative structural displacements are defined to quantify the seismic response reduction effects of the dampers. It can be concluded from the experimental studies that both seismic response reduction ratios increase as the mass ratio increases and decreases as the structural damping ratio increases.