Viscous damper design for St.

James
Theatre Ballet building, Wellington
DR. ARUN M. PUTHANPURAYIL

SENIOR STRUCTURAL ENGINEER, BECA, WELLINGTON

Wednesday 1 August 2018 - 5:30 pm to 6.00 pm social, 6.00 pm presentation starts.

Conference Centre Lecture Theatre, Conference Centre Building, 22 Symonds St

(south along Symonds St from the Engineering Building).

Viscous damper application for St. James Theatre-Ballet building is believed to be the
first innovative application of a velocity dependent distributed damping system for the
retrofit of a heritage building in NZ. The presentation will give a broad walk-through of
the various intricacies involved in the viscous damper design. It will also highlight how
to reliably design such a system to achieve a performance target. A pure performance
based optimal design framework using nonlinear time history analysis is used in this
project. The presentation will outline the key aspects of the framework including how to
use nonlinear time history analysis to “size” and “distribute” viscous dampers in a multi-
storey building. An outline of the lessons learned from a technical perspective and the
significance of design coordination in the implementation of the low damage
technologies will also be presented.

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Arun M. Puthanpurayil is a senior structural engineer for Beca, in Wellington. He has a total of 15 years of combined experience
in professional structural engineering consultancy and advanced research in nonlinear computational dynamics in India, UK and
New Zealand. His primary research and expertise is in computational elastic/inelastic-dynamics and optimization. He holds a PhD. in
earthquake engineering from the University of Canterbury (NZ) and an MSc in Earthquake and Civil Engineering Dynamics from the
University of Sheffield (UK). Recent projects include: Performance based innovative viscous damper optimal design for St James
Ballet building; Seismic assessment and soil-structure interaction of masonry buildings in Netherlands; Seismic assessment of
Wellington Regional Aquatic Centre; Frequency domain dynamic analysis of geothermal generator pedestal; Peer review of high
rise buildings in Thailand and Indonesia. His research portfolio includes more than 20 publications in international peer reviewed
journals, book chapters and conferences on topics related nonlinear dynamics and optimization.

For information on Wellington Regional Seminars, please contact Liam Wotherspoon: l.wotherspoon@auckland.ac.nz

2018 NZSEE Regional Seminar