• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.149-163
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• 2019

By integrating an active tuned mass damper (ATMD) and an inerter, the ATMDI has been proposed to attenuate undesirable oscillations of structures under the ground acceleration. Employing the mode generalized system, the dynamic magnification factors (DMF) of the structure-ATMDI system are formulated. The criterion can then be defined as the minimization of maximum values of the DMF of the controlled structure for optimum searching. By resorting to the defined criterion and the particle swarm optimization (PSO), the effects of varying the crucial parameters on the performance of ATMDI have been scrutinized in order to probe into its superiority. Furthermore, the results of both ATMD and tuned mass dampers inerter (TMDI) are included into consideration for comparing. Results corroborate that the ATMDI outperforms both ATMD and TMDI in terms of the effectiveness and robustness. Especially, the ATMDI may greatly reduce the demand on both the mass ratio and inerter mass ratio, thus being capable of further miniaturizing both the ATMD and TMDI. Likewise the miniaturized ATMDI still keeps nearly the same stroke as the TMDI with a larger mass ratio. Hence, the ATMDI is deemed to be a high performance control device with the miniaturization and suitable for super-tall buildings.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.665-678
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• 2017

In this paper the tuned mass-damper-inerter (TMDI) is considered for passive vibration control and energy harvesting in harmonically excited structures. The TMDI couples the classical tuned mass-damper (TMD) with a grounded inerter: a two-terminal linear device resisting the relative acceleration of its terminals by a constant of proportionality termed inertance. In this manner, the TMD is endowed with additional inertia, beyond the one offered by the attached mass, without any substantial increase to the overall weight. Closed-form analytical expressions for optimal TMDI parameters, stiffness and damping, given attached mass and inertance are derived by application of Den Hartog's tuning approach to suppress the response amplitude of force and base-acceleration excited single-degree-of-freedom structures. It is analytically shown that the TMDI is more effective from a same mass/weight TMD to suppress vibrations close to the natural frequency of the uncontrolled structure, while it is more robust to detuning effects. Moreover, it is shown that the mass amplification effect of the inerter achieves significant weight reduction for a target/predefined level of vibration suppression in a performance-based oriented design approach compared to the classical TMD. Lastly, the potential of using the TMDI for energy harvesting is explored by substituting the dissipative damper with an electromagnetic motor and assuming that the inertance can vary through the use of a flywheel-based inerter device. It is analytically shown that by reducing the inertance, treated as a mass/inertia-related design parameter not considered in conventional TMD-based energy harvesters, the available power for electric generation increases for fixed attached mass/weight, electromechanical damping, and stiffness properties.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.89 no.4
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• pp.383-397
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• 2024

To improve the vibration control performance and applicability of traditional particle tuned mass damper (PTMD) and realize the significant characteristic of lightweight design, this study proposes a novel particle tuned mass inerter system (PTMIS) by introducing inerter system (IS) to the PTMD. In the study, the motion equation of single degree of freedom (SDOF) structure attached with PTMIS is established first, then the variation law of the system's vibration reduction performance (VRP) is discussed through parameter analysis, and it is compared with the PTMD to analyze its VRP advantages. Finally, its vibration reduction (VR) mechanism from the perspective of core control force and energy analysis is explored, and its cavity relative displacement from the application perspective is analyzed. The results show that the PTMIS can remarkably improve the vibration control effectiveness of the PTMD. The reason is that the inerter can store energy and transfer the energy to the cavity and particles, which further stimulates the interaction between the two parts, thereby improving the nonlinear energy consumption effectiveness. Also, the IS can amplify the damping element's energy dissipation efficiency. In addition, the PTMIS can effectively reduce the working stroke of the PTMD, and through the analysis of the lightweight characteristics of the PTMIS, it is found that its lightweight advantage can reach nearly 100%.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.549-560
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• 2022

The optimum damping and tuning frequency ratio of the tuned mass damper-inerter (TMDI) for the base-isolated structure is obtained using the numerical searching technique under stationary white-noise and filtered white-noise earthquake excitation. The minimization of the isolated structure's mean-square relative displacement and absolute acceleration, as well as the maximization of the energy dissipation index, were chosen as the criteria for optimality. Using a curve-fitting technique, explicit formulae for TMDI damping and tuning frequency for white-noise excitation are then derived. The proposed empirical expressions for TMDI parameters are found to have a negligible error, making them useful for the effective design of base-isolated structures. The effectiveness of TMDI and its optimum parameters are influenced by the soil condition and isolation frequency, according to the comparison made of the optimized parameters and response with different soil profiles. The effectiveness of an optimally designed TMDI in controlling the displacement and acceleration response of the flexible isolated structure under real and pulse-type earthquakes is also observed and found to be increased as the inertance mass ratio increases.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.615-626
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• 2019

Inerter-based damping devices (IBBDs), which consist of inerter, spring and viscous damper, have been extensively investigated in vehicle suspension systems and demonstrated to be more effective than the traditional control devices with spring and viscous damper only. In the present study, the control performance on cable vibration reduction was studied for four different inerter-based damping devices, namely the parallel-connected viscous mass damper (PVMD), series-connected viscous mass damper (SVMD), tuned inerter dampers (TID) and tuned viscous mass damper (TVMD). Firstly the mechanism of the ball screw inerter is introduced. Then the state-space formulation of the cable-TID system is derived as an example for the cable-IBBDs system. Based on the complex modal analysis, single-mode cable vibration control analysis is conducted for PVMD, SVMD, TID and TVMD, and their optimal parameters and the maximum attainable damping ratios of the cable/damper system are obtained for several specified damper locations and modes in combination by the Nelder-Mead simplex algorithm. Lastly, optimal design of PVMD is developed for multi-mode vibration control of cable, and the results of damping ratio analysis are validated through the forced vibration analysis in a case study by numerical simulation. The results show that all the four inerter-based damping devices significantly outperform the viscous damper for single-mode vibration control. In the case of multi-mode vibration control, PVMD can provide more damping to the first four modes of cable than the viscous damper does, and their maximum control forces under resonant frequency of harmonic forced vibration are nearly the same. The results of this study clearly demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of PVMD in cable vibration control.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.72 no.6
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• pp.747-762
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• 2019

Based on the ball-screw mechanism, a tuned viscous mass damper (TVMD) has been proposed, which has functions of amplifying physical mass of the system and frequency tuning. Considering the sensitivity of a single TVMD's effectiveness to frequency mistuning like that of the conventional tuned mass damper (TMD) and according to the concept of the conventional multiple tuned mass damper (MTMD), in the present paper, multiple tuned mass viscous dampers (MTVMD) consisting of many tuned mass dampers (TVMD) with a uniform distribution of natural frequencies are considered for attenuating undesirable vibration of a structure. The MTVMD is manufactured by keeping the stiffness and damping constant and varying the mass associated with the lead of the ball-screw type inerter element in the damper. The structure is represented by its mode-generalized system in a specific vibration mode controlled using the mode reduced-order method. Modal properties and fundamental characteristics of the MTVMD-structure system are investigated analytically with the parameters, i.e., the frequency band, the average damping ratio, the tuning frequency ratio, the total number of TVMD and the total mass ratio. It is found that there exists an optimum set of the parameters that makes the frequency response curve of the structure flattened with smaller amplitudes in a wider input frequency range. The effectiveness and robustness of the MTVMD are also discussed in comparison with those of the usual single TVMD (STVMD) and the results shows that the MTVMD is more effective and robust with the same level of total mass.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.241-253
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• 2020

The inerter-based vibration absorber (IVA) is an enhanced variation of Tuned Mass Damper (TMD). The parametric optimization of absorbers in the previous research mainly considered only two decision variables, namely frequency ratio and damping ratio, and aimed to minimize peak displacement and acceleration individually under the excitation of the across-wind load. This paper extends these efforts by minimizing two conflicting objectives simultaneously, i.e., the extreme displacement and acceleration at the top floor, under the constraint of the physical mass. Six decision variables are optimized by adopting a constrained multi-objective evolutionary algorithm (CMOEA), i.e., NSGA-II, under fluctuating across- and along-wind loads, respectively. After obtaining a set of optimal individuals, a decision-making approach is employed to select one solution which corresponds to a Tuned Mass Damper Inerter/Tuned Inerter Damper (TMDI/TID). The optimization procedure is applied to parametric optimization of TMDI/TID installed in a 340-meter-high building under wind loads. The case study indicates that the optimally-designed TID outperforms TMDI and TMD in terms of wind-induced vibration mitigation under different wind directions, and the better results are obtained by the CMOEA than those optimized by other formulae. The optimal TID is proven to be robust against variations in the mass and damping of the host structure, and mitigation effects on acceleration responses are observed to be better than displacement control under different wind directions.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.82 no.3
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• pp.283-294
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• 2022

An inerter is a passive mechanical element whose inertance can be thousands of times its own physical mass. This paper discusses the application of an inerter-based passive control system, termed rotational inertial double-tuned mass damper (RIDTMD), to mitigate human-induced floor vibrations. First, the acceleration frequency response function of the floor with an RIDTMD is first derived. It is then employed to determine the optimal design parameters of the RIDTMD using the extended fixed-points technique. Based on a theoretical analysis, design-oriented empirical functions are proposed for the RIDTMD optimal parameters, whose performance for floor vibration control is evaluated by numerical examples, in which three typical human-induced load types are considered: walking, jumping, and bouncing. The results indicate that the applicability and effectiveness of the RIDTMD for human-induced floor vibration control are robust for various load types, load frequencies, and floor natural frequencies. For the same mass ratio, the RIDTMD is better than the TMD in reducing the floor vibration amplitude and improving the effective frequency suppression bandwidth, and for the same vibration suppression effect, the mass of the RIDTMD is much lighter than that of the TMD.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.49-61
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• 2020

This paper proposes a novel high performance vibration control device, multiple tuned mass dampers-inerters (MTMDI), to suppress the oscillatory motions of structures. The MTMDI, similar to the MTMD, involves multiple tuned mass damper-inerter (TMDI) units. In order to reveal the basic performance of the MTMDI, it is installed on a single degree-of-freedom (SDOF) structure excited by the ground acceleration, and the dynamic magnification factors (DMF) of the structure-MTMDI system are formulated. The optimization criterion is determined as the minimization of maximum values of the relative displacement's DMF for the controlled structure. Based on the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to tune the optimum parameters of the MTMDI, its performance has been investigated and evaluated in terms of control effectiveness, strokes, stiffness and damping coefficient, inerter element force, and robustness in frequency domain. Meanwhile, further comparison between the MTMDI with MTMD has been conducted. Numerical results clearly demonstrate the MTMDI outperforms the MTMD in control effectiveness and strokes of mass blocks. Additionally, in the aspects of frequency perturbations on both earthquake excitations and structures, the robustness of the MTMDI is also better than the MTMD.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.76 no.6
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• pp.709-724
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• 2020

The typical inerter system, the tuned viscous mass damper (TVMD), has been proven to be efficient. It is characterized by an energy-dissipation-enhancement effect, whereby the dashpot deformation of TVMD can be amplified for enhanced energy dissipation efficiency. However, existing studies related to TVMD have mainly been performed on elastic structures, so the working mechanism remains unclear for nonlinear structures. To deal with this, an energy-spectrum analysis framework is developed systematically for classic bilinear hysteretic structures with TVMD. Considering the soil effect, typical bedrock records are propagated through the soil deposit, for which the designed input energy spectra are proposed by considering the TVMD parameters and structural nonlinear properties. Furthermore, the energy-dissipation-enhancement effect of TVMD is quantitatively evaluated for bilinear hysteretic structures. The results show that the established designed input energy spectra can be employed to evaluate the total energy-dissipation burden for a nonlinear TVMD structure. Particularly, the stiffness of TVMD is the dominant factor in adjusting the total input energy. Compared with the case of elastic structures, the energy-dissipation-enhancement effect of TVMD for nonlinear structures is weakened so that the expected energy-dissipation effect of TVMD is replaced by the accumulated energy dissipation of the primary structure.