Some Passive Damping Sources on Flooring-Systems besides the TMD

Impulsive loads and walking loads can generate problematic structural vibrations in flooring-systems. Measures that may be taken to mitigate the problem would often be to consider the implementation of a tuned mass damper or even more advanced vibration control technologies; this in order to add damping to the structure. Basically also passive humans on a floor act as a damping source, but it also turns out from doing system identification tests with a floor strip that a quite simple set-up installed on the floor (cheap and readily at hand) might do a good job in terms of reducing vertical floor vibrations for some floors. The paper describes the tests with the floor strip, and the results, in terms of dynamic floor behaviour, are compared with what would be expected had the floor instead been equipped with a tuned mass damper. NOMENCLATURE f Floor frequency f1 TMD frequency μ Mass ratio ζ Floor damping ratio ζ1 TMD damping ratio x Distance from support L Span length M Modal mass m Mass