A novel lever-type inerter-based vibration absorber

A novel Lever-type Inerter-based Vibration Absorber (LIVA) is proposed. The proposed LIVA is based on a lever supported on a flexible auxiliary structure, connecting between the primary structure and a paralleled inerter-dashpot system. Based on analytical H∞ and H2 optimization, the formulas of the optimal parameters for the LIVA are derived. The parametric influences on optimal parameters and control performance of the LIVA are systematically investigated. Consequently, the control performance of the LIVA can be enhanced by increasing the auxiliary mass, lever ratio, or the frequency of the auxiliary structure. Considering practical aspect, the influences of damping ratios are discussed to compensate the assumptions adopted in analytical optimization. Thus, a design criterion is proposed to ensure the effectiveness of the LIVA. Finally, the vibration absorption performance of the LIVA is illustrated and compared through time domain analysis subjected to a recent earthquake event. The results have shown that the proposed LIVA exhibits a superior control performance than traditional TMD and another lever-type vibration absorber reported in a literature due to the leverage and inertance effects. Moreover, compared to the existed lever-type vibration absorbers with a fixed fulcrum, the proposed LIVA supported by a flexible auxiliary structure appears more feasible in practice.