New Elemental Damping Model for Nonlinear Dynamic Response

In this chapter, a new elemental damping model has been proposed to incorporate un-modeled energy dissipation in the simulation of seismic response of large-scale structures. It addresses the problems of existing elemental damping models in calibrating an elemental damping ratio for a desired global damping ratio and unintended significant coupling effects between global vibration modes. The new model maintains consistency between the elemental and the global damping ratios and avoids unnecessary complex calibration. It also allows the elemental damping ratio to be better correlated with the states of elemental stresses, deformations, damage variables, or any other internal state variables, such that a rational-based update on the elemental damping ratio can be used to simulate unmodeled, changing energy dissipation during nonlinear dynamic response. Examples have been used to demonstrate the performance of the new model.