Vibration Control of Footbridges Under Pedestrian Loading Using Tuned Mass Damper Systems with Eddy Current Damper Technology

Modern designs of footbridges often lead to slender constructions with long spans which results in structural systems with a low stiffness and comparatively low masses. A low natural frequency combined with low modal masses is the consequence. This makes footbridges prone to vibrations induced by pedestrians.

Well-known measures to increase the structural damping of a footbridge and hence control the risk of vibrations are Tuned mass dampers (TMD). One of the factors defining the effectiveness of a TMD is its damping mechanism. Characteristics of eddy current dampers can improve TMD performance significantly. An innovative TMD design using eddy current dampers as damping element for an application on footbridges is developped in this paper. First, the theoretical potential is analyzed analytically. A detailed discussion on the optimization of TMD parameters combined with the characteristics of eddy current dampers shows its advantages. In the second part a TMD construction using an eddy current damper is designed based on a case study of a footbridge.

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