Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to propose a practical method for optimum design of oil dampers with relief mechanism installed in multi-story buildings. The optimum design problem is formulated so as to minimize the maximum interstory drift under design earthquakes in terms of a set of relief forces subject to an inequality constraint on maximum ratio of the damping force to the relief force and an equality constraint on sum of relief forces of oil dampers. The proposed method to solve the optimum design problem is a successive procedure which consists of two steps. The first step is a sensitivity analysis including nonlinear time-history analyses, and the second step is a modification of the set of relief forces based upon the sensitivity analysis. Numerical examples are conducted to present the effectiveness and validity of the proposed design method.
