Optimum design of TMDs to suppress floor vibration using differential evolution

Abstract

Perceptible floor vibration occurs infrequently due to human activities such as walking in steel framed buildings. A general strategy to reduce the floor vibration is to install Tuned Mass Dampers (TMDs) between a floor slab and a raised floor. Two parameters, resonance frequency and damping ratio, of a TMD should be designed properly depending on the dynamic characteristics of a target floor so that the TMD acts effectively. In a conventional method, even when installing multiple TMDs to a floor, they have been regarded as one large TMD and the fixed theory, which is a method to design a single TMD, has been applied. We applied differential evolution, which is one of global optimization methods, to design of TMDs to reduce floor vibration and verified its effectiveness in an actual building. Vibration due to human walking of a floor to which TMDs has been installed were measured. As a result, 6 TMDs designed by differential evolution achieved vibration suppression performance equivalent to 10 TMDs designed by the fixed theory.