Probabilistic Seismic Response Assessment of Systems Equipped with Impact-Buffered Viscous Dampers

Impact-buffered viscous dampers (IBVDs) are effective devices for structural vibration control and impact mitigation. However, existing studies largely rely on deterministic analyses and do not account for the dispersion of dynamic responses of structures equipped with IBVDs caused by variability in seismic input. This study addresses this limitation by applying a probabilistic analysis approach to systematically evaluate both the geometric mean and dispersion of seismic responses. Specifically, the effects of the energy dissipation capacity and buffering capacity of IBVDs on probabilistic seismic responses are investigated. The influences of the energy dissipation capacity and buffering capacity on key response parameters are first examined in terms of both geometric mean and dispersion. Subsequently, a group of IBVDs that achieves the same displacement design target but uses different combinations of energy dissipation capacity and buffering capacity is compared in terms of probabilistic seismic responses and seismic risk. The results show that both the geometric mean and dispersion of system absolute acceleration and damper force increase significantly as the buffering capacity increases. For IBVDs that achieve the same displacement target, the dispersion of damper force at the design seismic intensity increases to up to three times the dispersion of displacement as the buffering capacity increases. In addition, IBVDs with higher buffering capacity exhibit lower lifetime risks in both displacement and damper force. More importantly, the results demonstrate that, due to response dispersion, the probabilistic approach predicts increases of 73.10% in displacement risk and 74.50% in damper force risk compared with the deterministic approach. This finding highlights that deterministic methods significantly underestimate seismic risk.