The 1994 Northridge quake has shown. While none of these structures collapsed. With defense and power generation markets waning, damper manufacturers have switched gears and moved into structures. This has happened at a time when building owners, still feeling the shocks of Northridge, are changing their attitudes about a building's seismic performance. Owners demolish their buildings rather than pay the prohibitive cost of replacing damaged structural members.
Problems still come up when engineers try to compute realistic deflections from code-derived forces.
The way I view the issue is as one of reliability. But that doesn't necessarily make for a better building. When you put more beef in the structure. From the Blue Book, the damper design specifications could possibly be included in the planned International Building Code in the year 2000. To aousner's hysteretie equation.