Viscoelastic dampers are one of the most popular earthquake mitigation devices for building structures with a large number of applications in civil engineering. The seismic performance of viscoelastic dampers is greatly affected by viscoelastic materials. The present paper addresses the theoretical and experimental studies of the viscoelastic damper. The regular polyhedron chain network models for viscoelastic materials are proposed based on the molecular chain network microstructures and the temperature–frequency equivalent principle. Several dynamic property tests for the viscoelastic damper at different temperatures, frequencies, and displacements are carried out, and the proposed models are verified by comparing the numerical and experimental results. The comparisons show that the viscoelastic damper has perfect energy dissipation capacity, and the regular polyhedron chain network models can well describe the mechanical properties of the viscoelastic damper at different environmental temperatures and excitation frequencies.

Viscoelastic dampers are conventional passive vibration control devices with excellent energy dissipation performance. The fractional derivative has a simple form and high accuracy in the modelling of viscoelastic materials/dampers. The internal variables reflect the internal state evolution of materials, and are often used to analyze the deformation and thermal process of materials. In the present work, the mechanical properties of a plate-shear-type viscoelastic damper at room temperature are tested under sinusoidal displacement excitations. The impacts of frequency and displacement amplitude on the dynamic properties of the viscoelastic damper in a wide frequency domain (0.1–25 Hz) are investigated. The higher-order fractional derivative model and the temperature–frequency equivalent principle are employed to characterize the frequency and temperature influence, and the internal variable theory considering the internal/microscale structure evolutions is introduced to capture the displacement affection. The higher-order fractional derivative model modified with the internal variable theory and temperature–frequency equivalent principle (ITHF) is accurate enough in describing the dynamic behaviors of viscoelastic dampers with varying frequencies and displacement amplitudes.

Viscoelastic dampers are a kind of classical passive energy dissipation and vibration control devices which are widely utilized in engineering fields. The mechanical properties and energy dissipation capacity of the viscoelastic damper are significantly affected by ambient temperature. In this work, dynamic properties tests of the sandwich type viscoelastic damper at different environmental temperatures are carried out. The equivalent fractional Kelvin model which can characterize the mechanical behavior of the viscoelastic damper with varying frequencies and temperatures is introduced to describe the dynamic properties and energy dissipation capability of the sandwich viscoelastic damper. The self-heating phenomenon of the sandwich viscoelastic damper is studied with a numerical simulation, and the dynamic properties and energy dissipation variation of the viscoelastic damper with self-heating processes are also analyzed. The results show that the dynamic properties of the viscoelastic damper are significantly affected by temperature, excitation frequency and the internal self-generated heating.