Effect of hysteretic steel damper uncertainty on seismic performance of steel buildings

Abstract The application of hysteretic damper has gained major attention in seismic resistant design of buildings. It provides an efficient and cost-effective solution to reduce the level of damage induced on the building due to seismic excitations. The efficiency of the damper is influenced by parameters such as yield strength, yield displacement and brace-damper assembly system stiffness. The premise of this paper is to investigate the effect of the uncertainty associated with the hysteretic damper design parameters on the probabilistic seismic performance of steel buildings. Two steel buildings which are designed in accordance with the European Standard design code are evaluated. The uncertainties associated with the damper design parameters are incorporated using the Optimised Latin Hypercube sampling method for different confidence levels. The building response is obtained by conducting nonlinear time history analyses in OpenSEES. The annual frequency of exceeding a damage limit state, which is quantified by integrating the seismic fragility curves and hazard curves, is computed for the steel buildings with and without consideration of the design parameter uncertainties.