Modeling, simulation, and validation of a pendulum-pounding tuned mass damper for vibration control

This paper proposes a new passive control device, pendulum-pounding tuned mass damper (PPTMD), to mitigate the response of lightly damped structures under various excitations. The proposed PPTMD consists of a tuned pendulum mass and a pounding boundary next to the equilibrium position of the pendulum mass. Moreover, a layer of viscoelastic materials called high energy-dissipation rubber is attached on the pounding boundary to dissipate the vibration energy through impacts. A simplified impact force model was developed for modeling the pounding behavior of the high energy-dissipation rubber pounding layer, and parameters in the simplified model were identified from free pounding experiments. The validation of the numerical method to simulate the dynamic behavior of the PPTMD was provided. The effectiveness of the PPTMD to control a single degree-of-freedom structure was numerically and experimentally studied under free vibration and forced vibration. The effects of the frequency tuning ratio, the coefficient of restitution, the excitation force amplitude, and the mass ratio were studied, respectively. Finally, the control performance of the PPTMD was compared with the classic tuned mass damper under free vibration, forced vibration, and several earthquake records. It is shown that the PPTMD can significantly increase the damping ratio of the controlled structure and effectively reduce the response of the controlled structure around the resonant frequency range. Furthermore, the PPTMD still achieves considerable control performance even if the frequency of the controlled structure varied in a wide range. Due to the different vibration control mechanism, the PPTMD outperforms the classic resonant frequency range in controlling the structural displacement response.