Design and testing of a lead damper for seismic applications

Abstract

The main objective of the research was the development of efficient, low-cost, and reliable structural dampers, suitable for use in structures subjected to wind, seismic, and other dynamic excitations. Different from similar dampers described in the literature, the energy dissipation device proposed herein works by plastic shear deformation of a set of lead rings. On account of its almost perfectly rigid-plastic behaviour, with little rate dependence, the device proved in laboratory tests to be able to absorb a large amount of energy during 103 cycles with no sign of shakedown. This article presents the basic design of the damper and the experimental determination of its mechanical characteristics by means of a set of cyclic tests, for frequencies ranging between 0.1 and 3 Hz and displacement amplitudes ranging from 1 to 12 mm. A simplified design procedure is proposed and verified by a numerical analysis using a finite-element model.