Rolling tuned mass damper for vibration control of building structures subjected to earthquakes: A comparative study

This study proposes an improved form of a tuned mass damper (TMD) to reduce vibrations in building structures subjected to earthquake loads. Unlike traditional TMDs with sliding motion, the mass element of the new type of TMD proposed in this study is rolling without sliding motion (denoted by RTMD). This motion increases the inertial component, thereby increasing the kinetic energy of RTMDs compared to traditional TMDs. As a result, RTMDs will have a different impact on the dynamic responses of the main structure than TMDs. First, the RTMD's stiffness and damping parameters are optimized as a passive control problem to minimize the peak relative displacement of the main structure. Then, RTMD thoroughly investigated its performance as an active control problem by adding a control force calculated from the Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR). A TMD with a mass equivalent to the RTMD is also investigated for comparison. The simulation results show that the RTMD is significantly more effective in reducing vibrations than the TMD in the nominal case of the main structure and different cases of main structure stiffness changes, as well as in the case of the structure–damping device system being subjected to different earthquake loads. In addition, in the case of active control, RTMD shows the above advantages and consumes less control power than TMD. These results demonstrated the robustness, stability, and performance of RTMD compared to classical TMDs.