Shared vibration absorbers for connected SDOF structures

Abstract

This paper considers the response reduction of structures connected with shared vibration absorbers. The response of two single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) structures next to each other are minimized by a connected mass damper as an absorber. The optimum values of the damper’s properties are obtained by using metaheuristic algorithms. The objective function is taken as the H2 norm of the regulated outputs, where the regulated outputs are taken as displacements of both structures. To simplify the problems, the stiffness and damping properties of the absorber are taken the same. Genetic algorithms are used to optimize the absorber parameters. Two cases are considered in the numerical examples. The first case is when we have twin buildings, in which each structure’s mass, stiffness, and damping are the same. The second case is when the structure stiffnesses are different, one is the stiff structure, and another is the flexible one. Several dampers’ constraints are considered to see the possibilities of the connected absorber to reduce the structural responses. The simulations of the structures subjected to four selected ground excitations were carried out to show the absorbers’ performance in reducing the structures’ response with different percentages of reductions.