Seismic mitigation of an existing building by connecting to a base-isolated building with visco-elastic dampers

This study investigates the feasibility of retrofitting an existing building by connecting the existing building to a new building using connecting dampers. The new building is base-isolated and viscoelastic dampers are assigned as connecting dampers. Scaled models are tested under three different earthquake records using a shaking table. The existing building and the new building are 9 and 8 stories respectively. The existing building model shows more than 3% increase in damping ratio. The maximum dynamic responses and the root mean square responses of the existing building model to earthquakes are substantially reduced by at least 20% and 59% respectively. Further, numerical models are developed by conducting time-history analysis to predict the performance of the proposed seismic mitigation system. The predictions agree well with the test results. Numerical simulations are carried out to optimize the properties of connecting dampers and base isolators. It is demonstrated that more than 50% of the peak responses can be reduced by properly adjusting the properties of connecting dampers and base isolators.