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A versatile active mass damper for structural vibration control
Publikationstyp
Conference Paper
Date Issued
2011
Sprache
English
Author(s)
Scheller, Jörn
Starossek, Uwe
Start Page
1777
End Page
1784
Citation
8th International Conference on Structural Dynamics (EURODYN 2011)
Contribution to Conference
Scopus ID
Publisher
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
ISBN
978-90-76019-31-4
In recent years, many slender structures were equipped with tuned mass dampers for vibration control. If properly tuned, these passive dampers can mitigate structural vibrations. Active mass dampers can be more efficient and used as an alternative. However, their application for high-rise buildings is very rare and - to the authors' knowledge - no such devices have been installed yet in bridges. Several reasons can be identified. Besides issues concerning reliability, the main problem is to create an efficient active device which has a low self-weight, is simple in mechanical design, possesses a robust control scheme, has a low power demand of its actuators, and consumes little energy. In this paper, a new active mass damper is presented which possesses these properties, thus overcoming drawbacks of conventional active mass dampers. Furthermore, it is shown that by varying the basic concept and using combinations of the device, the damper can be applied to various problems. One possible application of the new device is the control of lateral vibrations of a bridge deck induced by pedestrians. A bridge model equipped with a prototype active mass damper was designed, built, and tested at the Structural Analysis and Steel Structures Institute of Hamburg University of Technology. The tests impressively demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed damper concept. With a ratio of the active mass to the vibrating mass of the model of 0.48 %, an equivalent viscous damping ratio of 5.6 % was obtained. Another example application involves flutter control of a bridge deck section model. In wind tunnel experiments performed at the authors' institute, the critical wind speed was doubled with a mass ratio of 1.0 %. It can be concluded that the presented new active mass damper is highly versatile and efficiently reduces structural vibrations of various excitation sources.
Subjects
Active control
Active mass damper
Experiments
Flutter
Pedestrian induced vibrations
DDC Class
690: Building, Construction