Optimum design of Tuned Mass Dampers by displacement and energy perspectives

Tuned Mass Dampers are extensively used for vibration control in many engineering fields, such as civil, mechanical and aeronautical. The present work focuses on the analysis of the effectiveness of this passive vibration control strategy. Its goal is to test the Tuned Mass Damper performance both from the energy and from displacement perspectives. For this purpose, a simple single degree of freedom system subject to a dynamic action and equipped with a Tuned Mass Damper is analyzed. The device performance is estimated by two indicators that are related to the reduction of the maximum displacement and dissipated energy into the primary system. These indices will be adopted as objective functions to perform an optimization procedure based on two different criteria, to obtain Tuned Mass Damper parameters, which give the best performances. Different circumstances, which reflect on various characterizations of the input and of the main system, are analyzed. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.