ABSTRACT

Tuned mass damper (TMD) and base isolation (BI) systems have long been established as
effective control strategies for improving seismic performance of structures. The studies on the
performances of TMD and BI system in seismic vibration control assuming deterministic system
parameters are well-developed. A major limitation of such deterministic approach is that the
uncertainties in the performance related decision variables cannot be included in the optimum
design of such systems. But, the design of such control systems based on a single nominal model
of the system may fail to create a control system ensuring satisfactory performance. Thus, for an
efficient design of damper system, uncertainty associated with excitation as well as mechanical
model of the system should be explicitly taken into account. In fact the vibration control problem
considering uncertain system parameters has attracted a great deal of interest in the recent years.
The present study deals with the effects of uncertainties in the parameters characterizing the
mechanical model of the system and stochastic earthquake load on the optimum performance of
TMD and BI system to mitigate seismic vibration effect.

The optimum performance of TMD and BI system involves obtaining the optimum
frequency and damping ratio for TMD and optimum yield strength for BI system. The root mean
square displacement (RMSD) and root mean square acceleration (RMSA) are used as the
performance index for optimum TMD and BI system, respectively. The formulations are
presented in state space form in the random vibration framework to obtain the conditional second
order response quantities. The performance indices are quantified by the total probability
theorem to include the effect of parameter uncertainty. The investigations are performed for the
case when the information about uncertain system parameters is sufficient to describe those
probabilistically and also for the case when the information is incomplete. In the later case, the
ranges of variations of the parameters are only known and modelled as uncertain but bounded
(UBB) type. In such cases, following matrix perturbation theory and by making use of interval
extension, the optimization problem is transformed into appropriate deterministic optimization
problems. Subsequently, bounded design optimization (BDO) results i.e. the upper and lower
bound solutions of the optimum TMD and BI parameters are obtained. In this regard it is
important to note that, the optimisation of mean square response considering uncertainty does not
necessarily correspond to optimal design in terms of reliability of a structure. In order to obtain
such optimal design, a reliability-based design optimization (RBDO) approach is further studied.
The first-passage failure probability is used as the performance index for such optimisation

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study. The total probability theorem is employed in evaluating the unconditional first-passage
failure probability of structure.

The optimum performance of TMD and BI system considering random and UBB type
system parameters discussed in the above are based on the unconditional mean square response
or probability of failure of structures in the framework of total probability theory without any
consideration to the possible dispersion of the performance due to uncertainty. However, the
system so designed may be sensitive with respect to the variations of the input system parameters
due to uncertainty. Furthermore, the RBDO approach cannot be applied when the parameters are
UBB type. The optimum bounded solutions invoked in such situation are the worst case
measures and has little importance for practical design. In such cases, the robust design
optimization (RDO) becomes an attractive alternative. An RDO approach is further investigated
for optimum design of TMD and BI system so that the maximum response reduction capability
of the system will be less sensitive with respect to the variations due to system parameter
uncertainty. The RDO is performed by using a two-criterion equivalent deterministic
optimisation problem where the weighted sum of the mean value of the performance function
and its dispersion is minimised. The maximum RMSD and RMSA are taken as the performance
function for TMD and BI, respectively.

It is generally realized that the safety of structures though largely depends on uncertainty
in the excitation parameters, a definite change is observed in the TMD and BI parameters when
the effect of system parameter uncertainty is included in the optimization process. The response
reduction ratio or the failure probability increases with higher level of uncertainty. It is evident
that if the uncertainty in the parameters of the system is not considered, the TMD and BI
performances are overestimated and may lead to an unsafe design. As expected, the optimum
TMD and BI parameters and the associated controlled performances are not a unique value,
rather provides a bound when the system parameters are considered to be UBB type. The
proposed RDO results follow the general trend of the optimum solution obtained by
unconditional response based optimization results. However, the efficiencies of TMD and BI
system of protection are marginally less by the proposed RDO approach. It is generally observed
that more robustness is achieved at the cost of sacrificing the optimum performance; however the
dispersion of the performance is lower than the former case. Thus a more realistic and cost-
effective trade-offs between the control performance and its robustness is possible to achieve by
the RDO procedure. Thereby, the necessary flexibility to control the design through suitable
choice of weight factor can be achieved for a desired level of system response and its dispersion.