Research Information System
STRUCTURES, vol.86, 2026 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)
Tuned Mass Dampers (TMDs) are widely known for their effectiveness in reducing structural vibrations; however, their performance is highly sensitive to detuning, wherein shifts in the structure's natural frequency can substantially reduce their efficiency. This study introduces a novel bi-tuned mass damper (bi-TMD) system as a robust and practical alternative to both conventional single TMDs and more complex MTMD configurations. Three distinct bi-TMD configurations are investigated for a benchmark ten-story shear building: bi-TMD1, featuring vertically distributed masses; bi-TMD2, employing parallel masses on the top floor; and bi-TMD3, consisting of series-connected masses on the top floor. An optimization problem is formulated in the frequency domain to determine the optimal parameters (i.e., frequency, mass, and the damping ratio) of the biTMDs. The objective function minimizes the H infinity norm of the structure's transfer function. The optimization is performed using a new enhanced Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm incorporating a Trap Avoidance Operator (TAO-PSO), which effectively prevents premature convergence and improves global search performance. The results indicate that all proposed bi-TMD configurations substantially outperform conventional single-mass TMDs, with the series configuration (bi-TMD3) consistently delivering the most significant response reduction. Time-history analyses using a suite of near-field and far-field earthquake records confirm the system's effectiveness, showing average reductions of 18-29% in peak displacement and 35-48% in RMS acceleration. Finally, a sensitivity analysis demonstrates that the proposed bi-TMD systems exhibit remarkable robustness, maintaining superior performance under structural stiffness variations of up to +/- 20%.