Calibrated Equivalent Viscous Damping for Direct Displacement-Based Seismic Design of Suspended Piping Trapeze Restraint Installations

Direct displacement-based seismic design has been recently proposed for the seismic design of non-structural building elements. This paper deals with the development of damping models, relating equivalent viscous damping ratio to drift amplitude, for suspended piping trapeze restraint installations for direct displacement-based seismic design. The damping models are developed using reversed cyclic test data available in the literature. First, damping models are proposed using Jacobsen’s equal area approach. The damping models developed using Jacobsen’s approach are then assessed and calibrated using nonlinear time history analyses of single degree-of-freedom archetypes representing suspended piping trapeze restraint installations in buildings.