Advanced computational design of shared tuned mass-inerter dampers for vibration control of adjacent multi-story structures

Inerters are a novel type of mechanical actuation devices that are able to produce large inertial forces with a relatively small mass. Due to this property, inerters can provide an effective solution to the main drawbacks of tuned mass-dampers and, consequently, they are gaining an increasing relevance in the field of passive structural vibration control. In this paper, a computational design strategy for inerter-based vibration control schemes is presented. The proposed approach combines a computationally effective reduced-frequency H-infinity cost-function and a constrained global optimization solver to design different configurations of a shared tuned mass-inerter-damper system for the seismic protection of a multi-story two-building structure. To assess the effectiveness of the obtained configurations, the frequency characteristics and the seismic response of the interstory drifts and interbuilding approaches are investigated with positive results. (C) 2017, IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) Hosting by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.