The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the performance of a MR fluid damper for seismic vibration control of a structure in terms of equivalent linear damping or stiffness based on linearization technique and to experimentally verify the results from linearization technique by comparing them to those from system identification of a building structure with MR damper. First, among the various models for MR damper, the equivalent stiffness and damping are estimated for Bingham model which is mathematically simple and for Bouc-Wen model which can describe any kind of hysteretic behavior. Second, transfer function of a building structure with MR damper is obtained by performing shaking table tests and the stiffness and damping matrices of the structure are constructed using the modal information obtained by the transfer function. It is observed that the damping mathematically estimated using linearization technique for Bingham model matches well with the damping coefficient experimentally obtained by system identification.

In this study, based on the Building Register, status and existing structural criteria of small-scale steel-frame building is reviewed. As a result, the accumulated small-scale buildings account for about 85% of cumulative entire building. Furthermore, since 2000, the small-scale steel-frame buildings account for about 55% of the small-scale buildings. In other words, the proportion of small-scale steel-frame buildings has been increased. However, the structural criteria is not only insufficient but also structure for some small-scale steel-frame buildings does not have a reference.