MODAL DAMPING RATIOS FOR IRREGULAR IN

HEIGHT CONCRETE / STEEL STRUCTURES

Athanasios Papageorgiou, Charis Gantes

National Technical University of Athens, School of Civil Engineering, Athens,
Greece, cv97044@yahoo.gr

ABSTRACT
The present work deals with the dynamic response of structures that are irregular in
height consisting of two parts. The first part is made of concrete, is founded on the
ground and has a damping ratio equal to 5%, while the second one is made of steel,
is resting on the first one and has a damping ratio equal to 2%. Current regulations
do not cover the design of such structures, particularly the cases where the steel
part has considerable mass compared to that of the concrete part. The only analyti-
cal solution existing is in complex form, not suitable for every day use. Time
history analyses of 2-DOF systems are carried out, in order to evaluate the error
occurring by the use of these complex modal characteristics in real valued modal
analysis. The results are shown in contour plots of modal equivalent damping ratio
as a function of the dynamic characteristics of the two parts of the structure. These
modal damping ratios are then applied for the analysis of a real 2-DOF structure.

KEYWORDS
Vertical irregularity, complex modes, time history analyses, equivalent modal
damping, application in frame structure.

1 INTRODUCTION
Aim of this work is to deal with the seismic response of irregular structures, con-
sisting of two parts, a lower part, called primary structure or substructure, founded
on the ground, and an upper part, usually referred to as secondary structure or
superstructure, resting on the primary one. The primary structure is usually denoted
by the letter p and the secondary structure by the letter s. These two parts are
characterized by different dynamic response. One reason for that can be the mate-
rial distribution over the height of the structure, for example primary structure
158 A. Papageorgiou, C. Gantes

made of concrete and secondary one made of steel, leading to different damping
properties of the two parts. Another reason could be the different lateral stiffness
systems and/or energy dissipation mechanisms, e.g. a primary structure with brac-
ings or bearing walls and a secondary structure with frames, or both. Thus, the
overall dynamic response of the combined structural system, when it is subjected to
earthquake excitation, can be very complex.
Such structures are, for example, frequently encountered in stadiums like in Figure
1, where the spectators’ seats are usually configured on concrete frames, used also
to house auxiliary facilities beneath the seats, while cover of the seats is often
provided by steel frames or trusses supported by the concrete substructure. Other
possible applications include the addition of relatively light steel frames on top of
existing reinforced concrete buildings, in an effort to reduce the additional dead
weight, or for speed of construction. In accordance with several practical applica-
tions, such as the ones mentioned above, the particular case of structures where the
lower part is made of reinforced concrete and has a damping ratio equal to 5%
(typical for reinforced concrete structures) and the upper part is made of steel with
damping ratio equal to 2% (typical for welded steel structures) is investigated here.
The seismic design of such structures is not satisfactorily covered by the analysis
methods suggested by current design codes (EC8), especially when the mass of the
secondary system is of the same order as the mass of the primary system. If one
decides to carry out a full time history analysis of the irregular structure, a damping
matrix that will account for the different levels of damping must be created. This
kind of analysis is not usual for every day design practice and can not be handled
by existing commercial software. Another alternative is to separate the structure in
its eigenmodes and carry out a modal time history analysis or a modal spectral
analysis, but the resulting eigenmodes will be complex. None of the above alterna-
tives is appealing for every day use, as they require significant computational cost
as well as dealing with complex numbers, which is not generally implemented for

Fig.1: Stadium with spectators’ seats

Modal damping ratios for irregular in height concrete / steel structures 159

design in civil engineering structures. Thus, a simple yet conservative approach is

usually adopted in practice, namely that the structure has an overall damping ratio
equal to 2%. This makes possible the use of a code-based response spectrum to
evaluate the maxima of the design quantities, e.g. absolute accelerations and/or
shear forces, or even the execution of a modal time history analysis, without the
drawback of complex eigenmodes.
If the use of complex modes is finally accepted as a means of analysis, applying a
response spectrum method is possible. As shown by Igusa and der Kiureghian [1],
the mass, stiffness and damping matrices are easily transformed in the state – space
formulation and then the modal characteristics can be estimated, e.g. modal fre-
quencies, modal damping and eigenvectors. In the case where there are irregulari-
ties in one of the aforementioned matrices, the resulting modal characteristics will
be in complex form. Then, one can carry out a modal time history analysis using
Duhamel’s integral, or proceed with a response spectrum method, appropriately
modified to allow for the complex form of the modal characteristics.
Another way of approaching the analysis of such irregularly damped structures is
that of decoupling them in two parts, each one with normal damping distribution.
The primary structure is analyzed first, and its response is then induced in the
secondary structure as a new fictitious excitation, introducing thus an error in
predicting the response of each part. Provided that the resulting error is adequately
small, such a procedure is appealing for the case of concrete / steel irregular struc-
tures investigated here, since it allows different design teams to deal with each part.
Gupta and Tembulkar [2] have investigated the effects of decoupling of multiply
connected secondary structures on the response of the supporting primary structure
through an analytical procedure. Chen and Wu [3] also use analytical expressions
to predict the error response of the secondary structure when decoupling occurs.
Initially they study SDOF / SDOF structures and the results they obtain, are used to
predict the decoupling error if the primary structure has more than one degrees of
freedom. The merit of their approach is that it is not restricted to cases where the
secondary structure has a considerably smaller mass when compared with the
primary structure.
Expanding the work of Chen and Wu [3], Papageorgiou and Gantes [4] performed
time history analyses of SDOF / SDOF irregularly damped structures and investi-
gated the error in the prediction of the response of the secondary structure. Their
work expands also in MDOF / SDOF structures following that of Chen and Wu [3]
and then in MDOF / MDOF structures. Furthermore, a modification to the decoup-
ling procedure is introduced by adding the mass of the secondary structure to the
one of the primary structure, in an effort to take it into consideration and reduce the
decoupling error.
Other decoupling methods include iterations in the analysis of the two parts. Adam
and Fotiu [5] introduce two such analysis procedures to study the dynamic behav-
iour of elastoplastic primary / secondary irregular structures. The result of the
160 A. Papageorgiou, C. Gantes

iterations is that the error initially introduced is minimized and the obtained re-
sponse characteristics are practically identical to the ones of the coupled procedure,
where the structure is analyzed as a whole, while typically, the number of iterations
is adequately small.
Many investigators have proposed methods for simulating irregular damping
distributions with more usual ones, mostly regarding cases of structures with added
viscous dampers, due to their widespread implementation in buildings and the
subsequent need for providing solutions for issues pertaining to their design. Per-
haps the most commonly used method of that type is the so called modal strain
energy method. The basic assumption of the method is that the actual complex
mode shapes are replaced by real ones that correspond to the undamped structure.
Then, the ratio of the energy dissipated by the damping devices to the total strain
energy of the structure is calculated for each mode shape and the equivalent damp-
ing for the specific mode is extracted.
Based on the modal strain energy method, other methods have been developed in
order to enhance its results. Bilbao et al. [6] simulate the effect of the added damp-
ers in structures with a Rayleigh damping matrix that becomes diagonal with modal
transformation using real modes. Lee et al. [7] arrive at closed - form analytical
solutions for the estimation of the equivalent damping of structures equipped with
dampers. They apply state - space transformation of the equation of motion of the
irregularly damped system, and through a procedure of computations where the
eigenmodes of the system are in complex form, they finally arrive at proposing real
valued damping ratios for the structure, accounting also for the case of non linear
damping devices. Shen et al. [8] conduct scale experiments on multi - storey RC
frames. After the frames are damaged by the ground motion they add dampers,
monitor their new response characteristics and derive analytical solutions for the
equivalent damping of the system with the added dampers, by introducing a modi-
fication in the modal strain energy method. Similarly Chang et al. [9] study steel
multi - storey frames experimentally, and also propose a modification to the modal
strain energy method to simulate the irregular damping distribution with equivalent
modal damping. The aforementioned methods can be implemented in irregularly
damped concrete / steel frames by appropriately simulating the damping of each
storey with an equivalent damper and then use each proposal to evaluate the
equivalent damping.
A different approach is attempted by Huang et al. [10]. They examine a multi
degree of freedom (MDOF) structure comprised of two parts, each with different
damping ratio and also seek to extract conclusions for the equivalent modal damp-
ing of the structure using a numerical and an analytical approach. In the numerical
– exact one, they firstly simulate the structure with the exact damping distribution
and then proceed with a new simulation where the damping is arbitrarily set to
specific ratios. The error between the two analyses is then calculated and the
equivalent modal damping is elected as the one that minimizes the error. In the
Modal damping ratios for irregular in height concrete / steel structures 161

analytical – approximate method, they simulate each of the two discrete parts of the
MDOF system with their first mode oscillator, and thus arrive at a 2-DOF system
and they assume that the orthogonality condition applies for the damping matrix of
the irregularly damped 2-DOF structure. From the normalized values of the damp-
ing matrix they extract analytical expressions for the equivalent modal damping of
the simplified structure, and compare it to the results obtained by the numerical
solution with satisfactory accuracy.
In the present work, an attempt is made to use the complex modal damping ratios
resulting from the modal analysis of an irregularly damped system in their real
value form, and conduct a modal time history analysis. The incentive for this is to
investigate the error resulting from disregarding the complex values of the system
response characteristics, in order to make it more appealing for every day design
practice.

2 EQUIVALENT MODAL DAMPING RATIOS

A procedure combining that of Huang et al. [10] and the complex modal character-
istics is attempted. Simple, elastic 2-DOF structures are considered, as the one
shown in Figure 2, where M i and K i , i = s, p denote the mass and stiffness of
each part.
The coefficients Cim and Cik denote the Rayleigh mass and stiffness proportional
damping coefficients of each part of the structure. Their evaluation in the case of
structures with uniform damping is a quite simple procedure. In the case studied
here, with ζ p = 5% and ζ p = 2% a slight modification in their calculation has to be
made, as described by Clough and Penzien [11]. For the SDOF-SDOF studied here,
the damping matrix C is composed by two separate damping matrices C s and
C p , each one corresponding to one of the two different parts of the structure. First
though, the stiffness and mass matrices have to be divided in two submatrices M i
and K i , i = s, p , as described by equations (1) and (2):

Fig.2: 2-DOF irregular structure

162 A. Papageorgiou, C. Gantes

M 0 0 0 
Ms = s  , Mp =  (1)
 0 0 0 M p 

K −Ks  0 0 
Ks =  s  , Kp =  (2)
− Ks Ks  0 K p 
Then, the two eigenfrequencies ω1 and ω2 of the complete structure have to be
evaluated through a classical eigenvalue analysis. Next, the Rayleigh coefficients
for the two damping submatrices can be evaluated as follows:
a0,i  2ζ i ω1ω2 
 =   , i = s, p (3)
 1,i  ω1 + ω2
a  1 
And then the two damping submatrices are extracted:
C i = a0,i M i + a1,i K i , i = s, p (4)

Finally, the damping matrix is computed as the sum of the two damping subma-
trices:
C = ∑ C i , i = s, p (5)
i

The coefficients cim are calculated by the mass proportional part of the total damp-
ing matrix, e.g. a0,i M i and the coefficients cik by the stiffness proportional part,
e.g. a1,i K i , i = s, p .
In order to characterize the response of the system depending on the properties of
the two parts, the eigenfrequency Rω and the mass ratio Rm of secondary to pri-
mary part are defined:
ωs M
Rω = , Rm = s (6)
ωp Mp

For the analyses purposes, the primary system is selected to have an eigenperiod
equal to 0.1 sec and a mass equal to 1000 Mgr. A wide range of eigenfrequency
and mass ratios is examined and for each ratio pair, and given the characteristics of
the primary system, the complete 2 – DOF structure can be formed.
First, for each pair of eigenfrequency and mass ratios, an exact time history
analysis of the 2 – DOF structure is carried out as described by the following
equation:
[ M ]{ &&y} + [C ]{ y&} + [ K ]{ y} = − [ M ]{r} &&xg (7)
Modal damping ratios for irregular in height concrete / steel structures 163

Where [ M ] , [C ] , and [ K ] are the mass, damping and stiffness matrices of the
structure, { y} is the vector of relative displacements of the degrees of freedom of
the structure with respect to its base and r = (1....1)T , for the general case of an n
1 n

degree of freedom structure. The damping matrix is formed as described above,

allowing for the different damping ratios along the height of the structure. The
ground motion &x&g is selected to be harmonic in resonance with the first mode of
the 2-DOF structure. The results obtained are the total accelerations at each level
{}
y = { &&
e.g. && xg , and the storey shears {V } .
y} + {r} &&
Following, the equation (7) is transformed into its state – space form:
Au& + Bu = Fx&&g (8)

where:
0 M −M 0  0   y& 
A=  , B=  , F =  and u =   (9)
M C  0 K − Mr   y
The new eigenvalue equation is:
Bφi = − si Aφi , i = 1, 2 (10)

where the eigenvalues si and eigenvectors φi are complex valued.

The resulting modal damping ratio for each complex mode will be equal to:
− Re( si )
ζi = , i = 1, 2 (11)
si

The plot of the resulting modal damping ratios of the two modes over the
( Rω − Rm ) plane is shown in Figure 3.
The modal damping ratios ζ1 and ζ2 for each pair of eigenfrequency and mass ratios
are used in a real valued modal time history analysis of the 2-DOF structure under
the same excitation &x&g and the new approximate results obtained, are in terms of

{ }
y ′ = { &&
total accelerations at each level && xg and storey shears {V ′} . Now,
y ′} + {r} &&
each mode is analyzed as a SDOF oscillator with damping ratio ζ resulting from
Fig. 3 according to the dynamic characteristics of the initial 2 – DOF system:
q&&i + 2ζ iωi q&i + ωi2 qi = −Γ i &&
xg (12)

And the final structural response is then calculated:

y ′ = Φq (13)
164 A. Papageorgiou, C. Gantes

(a) (b)
Fig. 3: Distribution of modal damping ratios, (a) first mode and (b) second mode
The maxima of the two responses, exact and approximate, are obtained and the
error at each level between the two analyses is calculated as in equation (14). The
plots of the errors are shown in Figure 4 and Figure 5.

eaccl =
( ) y′
y − max &&
max && ( ), e =
max ( V ) − max ( V ' )
(14)
( )
max &&
y
shear
max ( V )
As can be seen from Figure 4 and Figure 5, the final error from applying complex
valued modal damping ratios in real valued modal analysis are very small, allowing
thus their application in real structures. The error levels are adequately small, so
that even the sum of the absolute values of the individual errors or their Euclidean
norm is not at levels that are prohibitive to their application.

3 APPLICATION TO REAL STRUCTURES

The proposed equivalent modal damping ratios are next applied to a real two-storey,
one-bay frame with realistic dimensions, shown in Fig. 6, in order to examine the
accuracy of the proposed approach in a very simple structure. The frame has a
concrete lower storey with damping ratio equal to 5% and a steel upper storey with
damping ratio equal to 2%. The Young’s modulus of concrete is assumed to be
equal to 27.5 GPa, while the corresponding modulus for the steel part is 210 GPa.
The concrete columns have a rectangular cross-section of 50 cm by 50 cm, and the
steel column has a HEB320 cross-section. The slabs are considered sufficiently
stiff to ensure diaphragm action at both levels. The mass of the p-system is 20 Mgr
and the one of the s-system is 16 Mgr. The dynamic characteristics of the structure
are shown in Table 1 and the deformed shapes of each mode are shown in Figure 7.
Modal damping ratios for irregular in height concrete / steel structures 165

(a) (b)
Fig. 4: Error in terms of total acceleration, (a) primary structure and (b) secondary structure

(a) (b)
Fig. 5: Error in terms of storey shear, (a) primary structure and (b) secondary structure

These values correspond to a mass ratio equal to 0.8 and an eigenfrequency ratio of
0.75. According to Figure 3, the resulting equivalent damping ratio is 2.5% for the
first mode and 3.5% for the second mode.
For the structure described above, subjected to a sinusoidal excitation in resonance
with its first mode, an exact time history analysis is carried out, accounting for the
real distribution of the damping, as well as three approximate equivalent ones, one
with the use of the resulting modal damping of 2.5% and 3.5% for the two modes,
one with the use of the conservative damping consideration of 2% and one consid-
ering an overall damping equal to 5%. Also, spectral analyses are carried out using
the CQC modal combination rule for the above damping ratios.
166 A. Papageorgiou, C. Gantes

Fig. 6: Frame structure under consideration

Fig. 7: 1st and 2nd mode deformed shapes

Table 1: Dynamic characteristics of frame structure

Mode Period (s) Modal mass participation factor
1 0.14 0.84
2 0.06 0.16

From each analysis the absolute maxima of the total accelerations at each level of
the structure were obtained. The error that each of the analyses with a uniform
damping ratio exhibits, in comparison to the analysis with the actual damping
distribution, is calculated as indicated next, in equation (15), and the resulting
errors for each level of the structure are shown in Figure 8, for both time-history
analysis and spectral analysis.

e* =
( )
max && (
yex − max &&
yappr ) (15)
max ( &&
y )
ex
Modal damping ratios for irregular in height concrete / steel structures 167

(a) (b)
Fig. 8: Error in terms of total acceleration, (a) primary structure and (b) secondary structure

The differences between the exact analysis and the ones with the arbitrarily se-
lected damping confirm that for the structure under consideration the modal damp-
ing ratio equal to 2.5% for the first mode and 3.5% for the second mode gives
response properties that are significantly closer to the ones of the same structure
with the exact damping distribution. Furthermore, as expected, the assumption of a
2% damping ratio gives conservative results, while 5% underestimates the response
at both levels. The use of the harmonic excitation in resonance with the first mode
that has a quite large participation ratio, as shown in Table 1, is rather conservative,
which means that for an actual seismic record the resulting errors will be smaller.
Thus, an upper limit for the estimation of the error occurring by the use of the
equivalent modal damping ratios is provided.

4 CONCLUSIONS
Structures that have irregular damping configuration over their height are exam-
ined. For a wide range of dynamic characteristics, the complex modal damping
ratios are computed. Then they are used in real valued modal analysis and the
occurring errors are estimated. An example of a real two-storey, one-bay frame
with different damping ratios over its height is analyzed with its exact damping
distribution, with the proposed one and with the damping ratios corresponding to
each part. The proposed uniform ratio gave response characteristics that were close
to the ones of the actual structure, while the other two damping ratios gave signifi-
cant errors. Future extension of this work will include (i) evaluation of the pro-
posed modal damping ratios for multi-story frame structures, (ii) expansion to more
complex structural systems, and (iii) evaluation for the case of seismic input mo-
tion, using actual accelerograms.
168 A. Papageorgiou, C. Gantes

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research project is co-financed by E.U.-European Social Fund (75%) and the
Greek Ministry of Development-GSRT (25%).

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