Optimal Passive Control of Shear Buildings

In the paper, the analysis of damping parameters for vibration reduction of buildings with use of optimization algorithm is presented. Optimal values of damping coefficients are determined at fundamental structural mode of shear buildings in order to attain desired added damping ratios. The cost function is defined as the sum of damping coefficients of the dampers to be minimized. Proposed optimization problem is solved by using three different numerical algorithms that are namely: Simulated Annealing, Nelder Mead and Differential Evolution algorithms, respectively. Numerical example is presented to prove the validity of the proposed method. The changes of optimal distributions of the dampers with respect to target damping ratios and structural periods in a particular range are investigated for two-story shear building model. The numerical results show that the proposed damper optimization method is easy to apply and efficient to find optimal damper distribution for a target damping ratio.