Assessment of Energy Potential and Vibration Mitigation of Regenerative Tuned Mass Dampers on Wind Excited Tall Buildings

Abstract

Significant amount of inherent vibration energy present in tall buildings as they oscillate under the action of wind is traditionally dissipated into heat by the building damping or damping devices like Tuned Mass Dampers (TMDs) introduced to ensure the structural safety and occupants’ comfort. A portion of this large amount of vibration energy can be harvested if we replace the damping devices with appropriate energy harvesters and power electronics. Accordingly, this paper assesses the potential of harvestable energy from various TMD configurations and evaluates their effectiveness in mitigating building motion. The wind is modeled and simulated using an autoregressive model and the responses of the building to the across- and along-wind load are calculated via spectral approach. The classic TMD, parallel multiple TMDs, and series multiple TMDs are designed based on the decentralized H2 control for optimal stiffness constants and damping coefficients. The performances, namely, the building acceleration, energy potential, and strokes of the TMDs, are studied and compared for different wind speeds and an actual recorded wind event. During high wind events, over 85 K W of power can be harvested from a building used in a benchmark study. TMDs in series configuration with significantly smaller mass than the classic single TMD can achieve similar performance level and energy harvesting with enhanced robustness, but they require larger strokes.