Assessing Vibration Control Performance of Optimized Tuned Mass Damper Inerter (TMDI) Configurations

This study investigates two Tuned Mass Damper with Inerter (TMDI) configurations that are compared with a classical TMD topology used as a benchmark. The performance of the two TMDI topologies is investigated considering the vibration control efficiency for single and multiple degrees of freedom structures. The aim is to understand how various design parameters influence the vibration attenuation capacity of these types of passive energy dissipation devices.

The design parameters of the studied damping configurations are numerically optimized using an optimality criterion related with the frequency dynamic amplification. The vibration control efficiency is studied for single and multiple degrees of freedom structures. Four actual seismic records were employed as the ground motion exciting the studied structural systems. To account for site effect, the filtered Kanai-Tajimi spectrum was used to model the seismic excitation and the TMDI configurations were optimized under three soil types (firm, medium and soft soils).

The TMDI configurations allowed for higher reduction in dynamic amplification compared with a classical TMD. The improvement ranges between 11% and 15% depending on the flexibility of the primary structure. In addition, studying the seismic response also confirms the potential of using TMDI configurations. For varying ground frequency ratio and for three different soil profiles, results demonstrate that the two TMDI configurations outperforms a classical TMD and achieves relatively high level of response attenuation.