Vibration control of high-rise buildings for wind: a robust passive and active tuned mass damper

Tuned mass dampers (TMDs) have been installed in many high-rise buildings, to improve their resiliency under dynamic loads. However, high-rise buildings may experience natural frequency changes under ambient temperature fluctuations, extreme wind loads and relative humidity variations. This makes the design of a TMD challenging and may lead to a detuned scenario, which can reduce significantly the performance. To alleviate this problem, the current paper presents a proposed approach for the design of a robust and efficient TMD. The approach accounts for the uncertain natural frequency, the optimization objective and the input excitation. The study shows that robust design parameters can be different from the optimal parameters. Nevertheless, predetermined optimal parameters are useful to attain design robustness. A case study of a high-rise building is executed. The TMD designed with the proposed approach showed its robustness and effectiveness in reducing the responses of high-rise buildings under multidirectional wind. The case study represents an engineered design that is instructive. The results show that shear buildings may be controlled with less effort than cantilever buildings. Structural control performance in high-rise buildings may depend on the shape of the building, hence the flow patterns, as well as the wind direction angle. To further increase the performance of the robust TMD in one lateral direction, active control using LQG and fuzzy logic controllers was carried out. The performance of the controllers is remarkable in enhancing the response reduction. In addition, the fuzzy logic controller may be more robust than the LQG controller.