Reduced-mass Adaptive TMD for Tall Buildings Damping

초록

Tall buildings are prone to wind-induced vibrations due to their slenderness whereby peak structural accelerations may be higher than the recommended maximum value. The common countermeasure is the installation of a tuned mass damper (TMD) near the highest occupied floor. Due to the extremely large modal mass of tall buildings and because of the narrow to broad band type of wind excitation the TMD mass may become inacceptable large – in extreme cases up to 2000 metric tons. It is therefore a need to develop more efficient TMD concepts which provide the same damping to the building but with reduced mass. The adaptive TMD concept described in this paper represents a solution to this problem. Frequency and damping of the adaptive TMD are controlled in real-time by semi-active oil dampers according to the actual structural acceleration. The resulting enhanced TMD efficiency allows reducing its mass by up to 20% compared to the classical passive TMD. The adaptive TMD system is fully fail-safe thanks to a smart valve system of the semi-active oil dampers. In contrast to active TMD solutions the adaptive TMD is unconditionally stable and its power consumption on the order of 1 kW is negligible small as controllable oil dampers are semi-active devices. The adaptive TMD with reduced mass, stable behavior and lowest power consumption is therefore a preferable and cost saving damping tool for tall buildings.