Designing an Optimal Tuned Mass Damper System for Seismic Vibrations

Earthquake jolts are synonymous with a system under forced vibration over a short period of time. A Tuned Mass Damper (TMD) is installed onto a building to minimize the effect of these vibrations by optimizing its mass, stiffness, and damping constant. A high-rise building subjected to seismic loads is isolated and simulated on ANSYS to derive the optimized TMD parameters. Simulations are run based on the effect of a lateral force on the building using response spectra from the 1940 Imperial Valley earthquake. The vibration response is mitigated by adding a Tuned Mass Damper at the top end of the building. A mathematical model is built to fit the desired response using second order differential equations. This 2 Degree of Freedom system with optimized values of stiffness (k) and damping coefficient (c) can be extrapolated for multistory buildings, based on the location of the TMD, building's natural frequency, and finely tuned TMD parameters. The paper investigates and calibrates the above-mentioned variables and validates the results analytically, numerically, and through simulations.