Development of A Four Arms Viscoelasic Damper And Its Application To A Heavy Floor Vibration Due To Walking Excitation

Abstract

High levels of unwanted vibrations are normally occur in light, and (or) long span floor systems due to human activities such as walking or jumping. It causes annoyance and discomfort to the occupants. Hence, rectification measures would be required to minimize floor vibrational displacement amplitudes. This work is concerned with the development of a new innovative passive viscoelastic four arms damper. The mission of this damper is to reduce floor vibration. The damper is tuned to the fundamental frequency of a vibrating concrete floor of 4.4 Hz. Atransient, finite element numerical analyses are performed on the coupled floorfour arms damper system and on the uncoupled systems to monitor and to compare the transient responses due to walking excitation. Similar analysis is done on the floor when the latter is coupled to a single arm viscoelasic damper having the same mass ratio. The single arm damper has been recently developed in a small laboratory scale by the author of this work. A reduction factor of 1.7 in the floor vibrational amplitude is obtained when the single arm damper is attached to the floor while a 1.8 reduction factor is observed when the new damper is attached. The reduction factors obtained are considered to be excellent results for heavy concrete floors applications.

Keywords

• floor vibrations
• viscoelastic damper
• four
• arm damper
• heavy concrete floors