An alternative methodology for designing tuned mass dampers to reduce seismic vibrations in building structures

It is well established that small tuned mass dampers (TMDs) attached to structures are very effective in reducing excessive harmonic vibrations induced by external loads but are not as interesting within the context of earthquake engineering problems. For this reason, large mass ratio TMDs have been proposed with the objective of adding a significant amount of damping to structures, thus constituting a good means of reducing structural response in these cases. This solution has other important and attractive dynamic features such as robustness to system uncertainties and reduction of the motion of the inertial mass. In this context, this paper aims to describe an alternative methodology to existing procedures used to tune these devices to earthquake loads and to present some additional considerations regarding its performance in controlling seismic vibrations. The main feature of the proposed method consists of establishing a direct proportion between the damping ratios of the structure's first two vibration modes and the adopted mass ratio. By equalizing the damping ratios of the system's main vibration modes, this proposal also facilitates the use of simplified methods, such as modal analysis based on response spectra. To demonstrate the usefulness of this alternative methodology, an application example is presented, which was also used to perform a parametric study involving other tuning methods and to estimate mass ratio values from which there is no significant advantage in increasing the TMD mass. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.