Development and Performance Evaluation of a Novel Translational Tuned Mass Damper

The structures are prone to dynamic loads such as earthquake as they often generate uncomfortable movement into existing structures. In order to reduce extreme vibration generated by dynamic or operational loads passive, active or hybrid controlling devices are used. And the advantages of passive systems are well accepted due to their inexpensiveness and simplicity. This study investigates the performance of a newly developed uniaxial tuned mass damper (TMD). The novelty of the developed device is that the properties of the damper are adjustable based on the structural requirements. And most importantly, another key design criterion is to make a low-cost affordable device. To do this end, a toy two degree of freedom (2-DOF) system is considered and the experiments are conducted. The experimental tests and numerical simulations are carried out on the structure without and with TMD along with extra masses of 25 kg, 30 kg and 35 kg on the floors to observe the effect of floor mass changes. The scaled El Centro 1940 earthquake data is used as input excitation. In order to determine the optimal performance of the damper, it is tuned to modal mass of 0% (i.e., without TMD), 5%, 7.5%, 10%, 12.5%, and 17.5%. The experimental results have shown that the structure without TMD has pronounced vibration (i.e., displacement) as compared to the structure with TMD. As the percentage of modal mass increases, the vibration of the structure decreases. It is observed that up to 12.5% of modal mass for both 20 and 25 sec excitation duration could be the optimum amount that minimizes the vibration of the structure. The overall performance of this device is capable of reducing vibration in a reasonable manner and has the possibility to use it for the real engineering application.