Vibration Control for House Structures beyond 3 Story using Adjustable Pendulum-Type Controller under Ground Excitation like Traffic Vibrations or Earthquakes

Abstract

In this paper, a new vibration control device called pendulum-type tuned mass damper (P.T.M.D.) is proposed to reduce an ordinal house vibration. In recent years, three or four stories houses are built increasingly in the urban areas to obtain wide living space. These houses are subjected to a problem caused by the traffic vibration, because a dominant frequency of the traffic vibration is coincident with the natural frequency of these houses. Although tuned mass dampers (T.M.D.) are considered to solve the problem, it needs to prepare a large mass on the top floor of these houses in order to obtain effective vibration reduction. On the contrary, P.T.M.D. can be placed between the first and second floor and it acts effectively on the principle of lever mechanism, since an action of the mass is expanded. A semi-optimal design approach for the P.T.M.D. is described, while it has an adjustable mechanism to adapt to various specifications of these houses. Effectiveness of the P.T.M.D. is demonstrated theoretically and experimentally by controlled results using frequency, time and seismic responses. Also this paper shows that the P.T.M.D. is effective against random vibration like earthquakes.