Effectiveness of Tuned Mass Dampers against Ground Motion Pulses

Abstract

It is known that the effectiveness of tuned mass dampers (TMDs) decreases as the input duration shortens. As a result, their use is commonly discouraged against short-duration, pulse-like ground motions, such as those occurring in near-field (NF) zones in the presence of forward directivity or fling-step effects. Yet a systematic assessment of such control impairment is still missing. In this paper, a recent analytical model of ground motion pulses is applied to the design and evaluation of TMDs against impulsive earthquakes. Based on this model, first, a new optimization method is introduced as an alternative to the classical