Optimal damper placement for minimum transfer functions

The purpose of this paper is to propose an efficient and systematic procedure for finding the optimal damper placement to minimize the sum of amplitudes of the transfer functions evaluated at the undamped fundamental natural frequency of a structural system subject to a constraint on the sum of the damping coefficients of added dampers. Optimality criteria are derived and the optimal damper placement is determined based upon those criteria without any indefinite iterative operation. The present procedure can be applied to any structural system so far as it can be modelled with finite-element systems. The present procedure also enables one to treat structural systems with an arbitrary damping system (for example, proportional or non-proportional) in a unified manner. Due to employment of a general dynamical property, i.e. the amplitude of a transfer function, the results are general and are not influenced by characteristics of input motions. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.