Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to propose a rational design approach to the seismic retrofitting of an existing building connected with an adjacent newly-built outer frame by viscous dampers. The mass and stiffness of the existing building together with the mass of the outer frame are given. Then the stiffness of the outer frame and the damping coefficient of the connecting dampers are found so that the requirements on the maximum interstory drift of the existing building are satisfied. By introducing a response reduction contour map in terms of the stiffness ratio κ and the connecting-damper damping ratio hR of the rigidly supported model, an approximate but effective design procedure is proposed. It is concluded that the proposed approach is an effective method for designing the outer frame and the connecting dampers.
