Optimization methodology for damper configuration based on building performance indices

Although energy dissipation devices (EDDs) have been used as a viable strategy of seismic protection of buildings for many years, current design codes do not provide guidelines for optimizing EDD configurations that may improve the structure's performance or decrease cost. This paper presents an effective and efficient design methodology to optimize the EDD configuration based on building performance objectives. The proposed strategy, performance-based heuristic optimization approach, uniquely combines the engineering knowledge and an iterative approach to optimize the EDD configuration for optimal structural performance under earthquake conditions. This strategy is capable of minimizing different performance indices of responses, such as interstory drift, roof displacement, acceleration, or base shear. During the optimization process, a modal analysis-based engineering heuristic is used to navigate the large solution space for efficient solutions. This new approach is compared with the evolutionary and the heuristic approaches. Results show that the new approach can effectively address different performance indices, and can efficiently provide the optimal EDD configuration.