TUNED MASS DAMPERS TO CONTROL FLOOR VIBRATION FROM HUMANS

The vibration of floor systems caused by human movements can be reduced using tuned mass dampers. The component mode synthesis (CMS) method is used to compute the response of the floor-tuned mass damper system using only a few natural modes of the floor. Models representing typical two-dimensional floor-system behavior are used to illustrate this technique. Tuning parameters obtained using the CMS method and an equivalent single degree of freedom (SDOF) model to represent the vibration characteristics of a multiple degree of freedom system are compared. It is found that using the CMS method can result in the optimum parameters of the tuned mass dampers regardless of the closeness of the natural frequencies of the system. This is not the case when the equivalent SDOF model is used. Therefore, it is concluded that use of CMS method to represent the model for optimization produces tuned mass damper parameters that provide global reduction in the amplitude of vibration for cases with and without closely spaced modes.