Vibration control of bridge subjected to multi-axle vehicle using multiple tuned mass friction dampers

The effectiveness of tuned mass friction damper (TMFD) in reducing undesirable resonant response of the bridge subjected to multi-axle vehicular load is investigated. A Taiwan high-speed railway (THSR) bridge subjected to Japanese SKS (Salkesa) train load is considered. The bridge is idealized as a simply supported Euler–Bernoulli beam with uniform properties throughout the length of the bridge, and the train’s vehicular load is modeled as a series of moving forces. Simplified model of vehicle, bridge and TMFD system has been considered to derive coupled differential equations of motion which is solved numerically using the Newmark’s linear acceleration method. The critical train velocities at which the bridge undergoes resonant vibration are investigated. Response of the bridge is studied for three different arrangements of TMFD systems, namely, TMFD attached at mid-span of the bridge, multiple tuned mass friction dampers (MTMFD) system concentrated at mid-span of the bridge and MTMFD system with distributed TMFD units along the length of the bridge. The optimum parameters of each TMFD system are found out. It has been demonstrated that an optimized MTMFD system concentrated at mid-span of the bridge is more effective than an optimized TMFD at the same place with the same total mass and an optimized MTMFD system having TMFD units distributed along the length of the bridge. However, the distributed MTMFD system is more effective than an optimized TMFD system, provided that TMFD units of MTMFD system are distributed within certain limiting interval and the frequency of TMFD units is appropriately distributed.