Vibration Reduction of a Stadium Corridor Using Tuned Mass Dampers

The dynamic characteristics of the long-span corridor in a stadium are usually very complicated. The vibration may be significant when subjected to heavy walking excitations, which requires vibration control systems, such as dampers, to be implemented. In this paper, a stadium corridor using Tuned Mass Dampers (TMDs) for vibration control was studied. The eigenvalue analysis of the corridor showed that a vertical vibration mode is prominent, and the frequency of this mode is close to human fast-walking frequency, which can cause resonance in the corridor. Simulated walking excitation loads were applied to the finite element model. A variety of walking scenarios, and different TMD frequencies and distributions were investigated in order to optimize the frequencies and layout of the TMDs. The analysis results indicated that TMDs can significantly reduce the vibration response of the corridor due to walking, particularly near the resonance frequency. Though the TMDs were tuned to or near the resonance frequency, when subjected to other walking frequencies, the corridor's responses with TMDs also reduced substantially. The sensitivity of TMDs to structural frequency necessitates the field dynamic tests before fine tuning the dampers to optimize the vibration control effects.