  In the inelastic time history analyses of structures in seismic motion, part
of the seismic energy that is imparted to the structure is absorbed by the
inelastic structural model, and Rayleigh damping is commonly used in practice
as an additional energy dissipation source. It has been acknowledged that
Rayleigh damping models lack physical consistency and that, in turn, it must be
carefully used to avoid encountering unintended consequences as the appearance
of artificial damping. There are concerns raised by the mass proportional part
of Rayleigh damping, but they are not considered in this paper. As far as the
stiffness proportional part of Rayleigh damping is concerned, either the
initial structural stiffness or the updated tangent stiffness can be used. The
objective of this paper is to provide a comprehensive comparison of these two
types of Rayleigh damping models so that a practitioner (i) can objectively
choose the type of Rayleigh damping model that best fits her/his needs and (ii)
is provided with useful analytical tools to design Rayleigh damping model with
good control on the damping ratios throughout inelastic analysis. To that end,
a review of the literature dedicated to Rayleigh damping within these last two
decades is first presented; then, practical tools to control the modal damping
ratios throughout the time history analysis are developed; a simple example is
finally used to illustrate the differences resulting from the use of either
initial or tangent stiffness-based Rayleigh damping model.
