• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.1123-1141
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• 2016

To explore the application of traditional tuned mass dampers (TMDs) to the earthquake induced vibration control problem, a pounding tuned mass damper (PTMD) is proposed by adding a viscoelastic limitation to the traditional TMD. In the proposed PTMD, the vibration energy can be further dissipated through the impact between the attached mass and the viscoelastic layer. More energy dissipation modes can guarantee better control effectiveness under a suite of excitations. To further reduce mass ratio and enhance the implementation of the PTMD control, multiple PTMDs (MPTMD) control is then presented. After the experimental validation of the proposed improved Hertz based pounding model, the basic equations of the MPTMD controlled system are obtained. Numerical simulation is conducted on the benchmark model of the Canton Tower. The control effectiveness of the PTMD and the MPTMD is analyzed and compared under different earthquake inputs. The sensitivity and the optimization of the design parameters are also investigated. It is demonstrated that PTMDs have better control efficiency over the traditional TMDs, especially under more severe excitation. The control performance can be further improved with MPTMD control. The robustness can be enhanced while the attached mass for each PTMD can be greatly reduced. It is also demonstrated through the simulation that a non-uniformly distributed MPTMD has better control performance than the uniformly distributed one. Parameter study is carried out for both the PTMD and the MPTMD systems. Finally, the optimization of the design parameters, including mass ratio, initial gap value, and number of PTMD in the MPTMD system, is performed for control improvement.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.545-553
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• 2017

A pounding tuned mass damper (PTMD) can be considered as a passive device, which combines the merits of a traditional tuned mass damper (TMD) and a collision damper. A recent analytical study by the authors demonstrated that the PTMD base on the energy dissipation during impact is able to achieve better control effectiveness over the traditional TMD. In this paper, a PTMD prototype is manufactured and applied for seismic response reduction to examine its efficacy. A series of shaking table tests is conducted in a three-story building frame model under single-dimensional and two-dimensional broadband earthquake excitations with different excitation intensities. The ability of the PTMD to reduce the structural responses is experimentally investigated. The results show that the traditional TMD is sensitive to input excitations, while the PTMD mostly has improved control performance over the TMD to remarkably reduce both the peak and root-mean-square (RMS) structural responses under single-dimensional earthquake excitation. Unlike the TMD, the PTMD is found to have the merit of maintaining a stable performance when subjected to different earthquake loadings. In addition, it is also indicated that the performance of the PTMD can be enhanced by adjusting the initial gap value, and the control effectiveness improves with the increasing excitation intensity. Under two-dimensional earthquake inputs, the PTMD controls remain outperform the TMD controls; however, the oscillation of the added mass is observed during the test, which may induce torsional vibration modes of the structure, and hence, result in poor control performance especially after a strong earthquake period.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.88 no.4
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• pp.379-387
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• 2023

Wind and earthquake loads may cause strong vibrations in large-span cable-stayed bridges, leading to the inability of the bridge to operate normally. An improved Pounding Tuned Mass Damper (PTMD) system was designed to improve the safety of the large-span cable-stayed bridge. The vibration control effect of the improved PTMD system on the large-span cablestayed bridge under the combined action of earthquake-wind-traffic was studied. Furthermore, the impact of different parameters on the vibration suppression performance of the improved PTMD system was analyzed. The numerical results indicate that the PTMD system is very effective in suppressing the displacements of the bridge caused by both the traffic-wind coupling and traffic-earthquake coupling. Moreover, the number, mass ratio, pounding stiffness, and gap values have a significant influence on the vibration suppression performance of the improved PTMD system. When the number of PTMD is increased from 3 to 9, the vibration reduction ratio of the vertical displacement is increased from 25.39% to 48.05%. As the mass ratio changes from 0.5% to 2%, the vibration reduction ratio increases significantly from 22.23% to 53.30%.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.625-635
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• 2022

High-rise buildings (HRBs) are considered one of the most common structures nowadays due to the population growth, especially in crowded towns. The lack of land in crowded cities has led to the convergence of the HRBs and the absence of any gaps between them, especially in lands with weak soil (e.g., liquefaction-prone soil), but then during earthquakes, these structures may be exposed to the risk of collision between them due to the large increase in the horizontal displacements, which may be destructive in some cases to the one or both of these adjacent buildings. To evaluate methods of reducing the risk of collision between adjacent twin HRBs, this research investigates three vibration control methods to reduce the risk of collision due to five different earthquakes for the case of two adjacent reinforced concrete (RC) twin high-rise buildings of 15 floors height without gap distance between them, founded on raft foundation supported on piles inside a liquefaction-prone soil. Contact pounding elements between the two buildings (distributed at all floor levels and at the raft foundation level) are used to make the impact strength between the two buildings realistic. The mitigation methods investigated are the base isolation, the tuned mass damper (TMD) method (using traditional TMDs), and the pounding tuned mass damper (PTMD) method (using PTMDs connected between the two buildings). The results show that the PTMD method between the two adjacent RC twin high-rise buildings is more efficient than the other two methods in mitigating the earthquake-induced pounding risk.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.579-587
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• 2019

In this paper, pounding tuned mass dampers (PTMDs) were designed to mitigate the multi-mode vortex-induced vibration (VIV) of stay cable utilizing the viscous-elastic material's energy-dissipated ability. The PTMD device consists of a cantilever metal rod beam, a metal mass block and a specially designed damping element covered with viscous-elastic material layer. Wind-tunnel experiment on VIV of stay cable model was set up to validate the effectiveness of the PTMD on multi-mode VIV mitigation of stay cable. By analyzing and comparing testing results of all testing cases, it could be verified that the PTMD with viscous-elastic pounding boundary can obviously mitigate the VIV amplitude of the stay cable. Moreover, the installed location and the design parameters of the PTMD device based on the controlled modes of the primary stay cable, would have a certain extent suppression on the other modal vibration of the stay cable, which means that the designed PTMDs are effective among a large band of frequency for the multi-mode VIV control of the stay cable.

• Coupled systems mechanics
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.277-295
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• 2023

Unsymmetrical high-rise buildings (HRBs) subjected to earthquake represent a difficult challenge to structural engineering, especially taking into consideration the effect of soil-structure interaction (SSI). L-shape in plan HRBs suffer from big straining actions when are subjected to an earthquake (in x- or y-direction, or both x- and y- directions). Additionally, the disastrous effect of seismic pounding may appear between two adjacent unsymmetrical HRBs. For two unsymmetrical L-shape in plan HRBs subjected to earthquake in three different direction cases (x, y, or both), including the SSI effect, different methods are investigated to mitigate the seismic pounding and thus protect these types of structures under the earthquake effect. The most effective technique to mitigate the seismic pounding and help in seismically protecting these adjacent HRBs is found herein to be the use of a combination of pounding tuned mass dampers (PTMDs) all over the height (at the connection points) together with tuned mass dampers (TMDs) on the top of both buildings.