Experimental study on adaptive-passive tuned mass damper with variable stiffness for vertical human-induced vibration control

Serviceability problem and human-induced vibration control of slender footbridges are of increasing interest to structural engineers. Passive tuned mass dampers (TMDs) have a wide range of applications in human-induced vibration control. However, a passive TMD is sensitive to the frequency deviation and, as a result a mistuned TMD will lose its control effect. An adaptive TMD can solve the mistuning problem of a passive TMD. However, there is few adaptive TMDs with variable stiffness in this issue. To fill this gap, an adaptive-passive variable stiffness TMD (APVS-TMD) is proposed in this study. The stiffness and frequency of APVS-TMD can be retuned through changing the length of free end of cantilever beam, while the damping can be retuned by adjusting the air gap between the conductor plate and magnets. As for the target natural frequency to be adjusted, the first two modal frequencies of the TMD-structure coupled system are identified under ambient excitation first, and then, the decoupled structural natural frequency is obtained according to the developed method based on the un-damped 2-degree of freedom (DOF) modal analysis. By means of numerical simulation, the identification strategy is verified using a SDOF lumped mass main structure and an ideal simply supported beam model. Then, the identification and stiffness retuning operations of the APVS-TMD are further verified through a footbridge model experiment. Here, control effects of the APVS-TMD to walking-and running-induced vibrations are highlighted and compared with those of a mistuned TMD. Experimental results show that the APVS-TMD can identify the decoupled structural natural frequency from the coupled system accurately, and control human-induced vibra-tions effectively.

Automated summary

In this study, an adaptive-passive variable stiffness tuned mass damper (APVS-TMD) is proposed to solve the mistuning problem of a passive TMD. The stiffness and frequency of the APVS-TMD can be retuned by changing the length of the cantilever beam and adjusting the air gap between the conductor plate and magnets. Numerical simulation and experimental verification show that the APVS-TMD can accurately identify the decoupled structural natural frequency and effectively control human-induced vibrations.