Mass Damper Using Friction-Dissipating Devices

The paper proposes and studies a nonlinear mass damper that uses friction dampers acting transversely to the direction of the motion of the mass damper as a means for energy dissipation. The resistant scheme of this mass damper shows a hysteretic damping mechanism in which the dissipation of energy is quadratic in the amplitude of deformation. The effectiveness of the mass damper in reducing vibrations of the main structural system to which it is attached is investigated. The statistical linearization technique is used to estimate the mean square response of the system subjected to random excitation. The optimum parameters of this mass damper are defined as those that minimize the mean square deformation of the main structural system subjected to random excitation. The study confirms that the efficacy of this nonlinear tuned mass damper (TMD) system is comparable to that of a linear TMD system for a wide range of excitation intensity.