Viscoelastic Materials for Structural Dampers: A Review

Structural control against earthquakes and other external dynamic loadings gains more importance given the burgeoning demand on the construction of various structures and high-rise buildings. Viscoelastic damper (VED) is a common type of passive control device to reduce structural vibrations. It is found that the performance of the VEDs is usually dominated by the vulcanized viscoelastic material (VEM) whose mechanical characteristics are sensitive to temperature, strain amplitude and excitation frequency. Due to the complex nature of the VEM compounds, the selection of such materials introduces degrees of uncertainty such that their performances in civil applications are rather scattered. Furthermore, existing efforts of various VEMs and the available analytical constitutive models were seldomly summarized despite the recent advancements of VEDs. This paper presents a critical review of the types, mechanical properties, testing protocols, and analytical models of VEMs considered for VED applications. In addition to the standard VEMs, the hybrid materials and the special VEMs are also summarized. Systematic comparisons of their efficiency, comparative advantages and disadvantages are presented. Besides, various analytical constitutive models to simulate the mechanical behavior of the VEMs are summarized. Finally, this paper identifies and highlights an ensemble of problems in the existing studies and the possible improvements that could be made in the future.