The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

A friction mass damper for vibration control

Inaudi, Jose A.; Kelly, James M.

UCB/EERC-92/15, Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, 1992-10, 64 pages (520/I528/1992)

A theoretical study is presented of a new hysteretic mass damper system for vibration reduction of lightly damped structures. This work is based on research started by the first author on the use of frictional devices acting transversely to the direction of motion as a means of energy dissipation. It represents the initial stage of an ongoing research program on innovative techniques for vibration control. The tuned mass damper system uses a friction damper device acting transversely to the direction of motion of the mass damper and linear springs acting in the direction of motion of the mass damper. The resistance scheme of this device presents a hysteretic damping mechanism in which the dissipation of energy is quadratic in the amplitude of deformation. When attached to a main structural system subjected to support excitation, this nonlinear dynamic absorber effectively reduces the deformations of the main structure to which the mass damper is attached. The effectiveness in reducing vibrations of the main structural system is investigated, and two linearization techniques are used to optimize the parameters of the system.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/EERC/EERC-92-15.pdf (2 MB)