COMBINED USE OF INNOVATIVE PASSIVE CONTROL DEVICES AND CONVENTIONAL BASE ISOLATION STRATEGIES

This manuscript contains the main part of my research performed in the last three years at the Department of Engineering, University of Palermo, at the Department of Basic Sciences in Engineering Sciences (Unit of Applied Mechanics), University of Innsbruck, Austria and at the company FIP Mec, Selvazzano Dentro, Padova. Within the research framework of Structural Control, this dissertation proposes novel passive control strategies to mitigate the dynamic response of base isolated structural systems. Among the several types of devices proposed in literature, Tuned Mass Dampers and Tuned Liquid Column Dampers are undoubtedly the most widely employed vibration control devices for coupling with base isolated structures. However, excessively large secondary masses of these devices are required to achieve significant seismic demand reduction. Therefore, inerter-based devices, such as the Tuned Mass Damper Inerter (TMDI) and a proposed variant configuration, referred to as New Tuned Mass Damper Inerter (New TMDI), represent now an interesting alternative for their particular characteristic of the “mass amplification effect” of the inerter which can lead to enhanced performance compared to the classical devices. On this base, in this work, the behavior and main characteristics of these devices will be investigated and their effect on the response of base isolated systems will be studied from a theoretical perspective. An investigation on the optimal choice of the design parameters of these devices will be presented with the intent of providing reliable and direct closed analytical forms. Several numerical applications illustrate the efficiency of the proposed approach and the potential of the TMDI and New TMDI to suppress the vibrations of isolated structures vis-à-vis the traditional devices.