Question

What is the benefit of damping in structures, and what are the most important things and characteristics that must be considered and studied in order for damping to be very effective against earthquakes

Answer 1

Damping is a technique which is being applied to structures by that if any vibration or shock occurs it would have tendency to absorb that. The amplitude of the vibration is being decayed by the damping. Various mechanism can result in damping of any structures and there are Various benefits of damping in any structure. The most important aspect of damping is reducing the significant risk of earthquake as the vibrations caused by them are being ceased due to the damped structures. Sooner the vibration ceases less will be the damage to the structure.

There are various considerations that are to be made at the time of damping of the structure. When any structure is subjected to oscillatory deformation, the state of energy at the moment can be described as sum of kinetic and potential energy. The energy is to be lost per every deformation cycle and that would result in effective damping. Below are some methods or considerations that would help in improving the damping of the structure and that would result in better dealing with the earth quakes :

• Natural frequency of the structure is being altered and tried to increase.
• The structures are designed with soft and strength bearing walls.
• Spring and additional dampers must be introduced in the structures.

All the above methods mentioned would help in improving the damping of structure that would decrease the amplitude of the earthquake up to some extent and try to absorb the shocks introduced at the occurrence time.