Wind tunnel comparison of active and passive tuned mass dampers

This paper compares the performance of various active tuned mass dampers (ATMD) with a passive tuned mass damper (TMD) by assessing their effectiveness in suppressing wind-induced building vibrations in a program of wind tunnel model studies at the wind tunnel facility at the Department of Civil Engineering, the University of Sydney. Five damper configurations with varying parameters, which gave effectively five distinctively different ATMD devices, were tested. The TMD chosen for the comparison was so tuned to give it a displacement ratio of 2.5. Displacement ratio is defined as the ratio of maximum mass damper displacement to maximum displacement of the building. The TMD was compared to all ATMD configurations both experimentally and analytically. The comparison between the effectiveness of TMD and ATMDs in suppressing wind induced building vibrations, established that the ATMD operated in a far more effective manner than the TMD. The superior vibration control performance offered by the ATMD was due to the differences in operating principles between the two systems.