Passive vibration control of engineering structures based on an innovative column-in-column (CIC) concept

Many civil engineering structures are supported by tall slender columns, which are susceptible to seismic excitations. Inspired by the tuned mass damper (TMD) concept, these conventional columns are proposed to be divided into two parts in the present study, i.e. to form a column-in-column (CIC) system, to mitigate seismic induced vibrations of these structures without compromising their loading capacities and increasing the structural materials. In particular, the outer column serves as the primary structure in the structure-TMD system, and the inner column performs as the TMD. The inner and outer columns are connected together by the connecting devices that are selected based on the TMD concept. To examine the effectiveness of the proposed method, comprehensive numerical simulations are carried out by using the commercial finite element code ABAQUS. Numerical results show that, without changing too much of the conventional design, the proposed method is effective to reduce seismic induced vibrations. This system is believed has great application potentials in engineering practices.