Experimental Comparison of Dynamic Behavior of Structures with a Particle Damper and a Tuned Mass Damper

Abstract

This paper investigates the dynamic behavior of structures with a particle damper (PD) and a tuned mass damper (TMD) by shaking table tests and aeroelastic wind tunnel tests. The influence of parameters including seismic waves, peak ground accelerations, damping ratios, mass ratios, and wind angles of attack are analyzed. A systematic comparison between the PD and TMD shows that the vibration-control effects of the PD are generally better than those of the TMD under both earthquake and wind loads. The reason lies in the fact that the PD can dissipate the input energy not only by tuning frequency (similar to TMD) but also by the impact and friction between particles and between the particles and the wall of the container. Moreover, a theoretical analysis of a single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) system with optimum PD and TMD was also carried out by numerical simulations, and the hidden vibration-control mechanism is discussed. The results indicate that the optimum vibration-control effects of both dampers are comparable, but the swing amplitude of the additional mass of the PD is much smaller than that of the TMD. Through a series of experiments with various parameters, the results demonstrate that the characteristics of the seismic input and the wind angle of attack have a larger influence on the damping performance of the TMD compared with the PD, indicating that the PD is less sensitive to the changing parameters.