Tuned Mass Damper Design for Optimally Minimizing Fatigue Damage

Abstract

Traditionally the usage of a tuned mass damper (TMD) is to improve the survivability of the primary structure under an extraordinary loading environment while the design loading condition is often described by a harmonic function, or sometimes by a stationary random process that can be fully characterized by a power spectral density (PSD) function. In contrast, this paper considers the environmental loading to be a long-term nonstationary stochastic process characterized by a probabilistic PSD function. One engineering motivation to design a TMD under a long-term random loading condition is for prolonging the fatigue life of the primary structure. The primary contribution of this study is to provide the theoretical framework for designing a TMD that can optimally minimize structural fatigue damage.