Tuning of mass dampers for preventing brittle fracture by employing teaching learning based optimization

In design of reinforced concrete structures, a ductile design is needed, because the brittle fracture is sudden. Also, the energy absorbed by the structure is effective for ductile structures during earthquake excitations. In design regulations, especially for vertical supporters such as columns, the shear force and axial force capacity is limited, although the strength of the members is not at the limits. For that reason, the shear forces of structures excited by earthquakes can be reduced by adding a tuned mass damper (TMD), but TMD must be optimized and it must not be heavy. If the mass of the TMD is not optimized, the ductile behaviour constraint about the axial force capacity cannot be provided. The compressive strength of the concrete is a measure for the effective application of a TMD to a reinforced concrete structure. Since the mass is limited by the design constraint, the other design variables of TMD such as period and damping ratio are optimized. Using the formulas for frequency and damping ratio related to a preselected mass may not be sufficient and a precise optimum solution for preventing brittle fracture. Metaheuristic methods can be used by using a specific limit. In this study, Teaching Learning Based Optimization (TLBO) is employed to find optimum TMD parameters. Several earthquake excitations were used in the optimization process. A three storey RC frame structures with different compressive strength of concrete is investigated. Three stopping criteria have been used in the proposed methodology. The first criterion is the reduction of the maxi‐mum shear force value for the most critical excitation to the ductile behaviour limit. The second criterion is the reduction of the ratio of maximum first storey displacements of structure with and without TMD. This value is reduced under a user defined value, but the user defined value can be entered as zero. This value can be iteratively increased for minimization. The last criterion is the reduction of the acceleration transfer function of the structure. The proposed method is feasible on finding optimum TMD ensuring ductility conditions. (© 2016 Wiley‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)