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Vibration and Control

Designing optimal multiple tuned mass dampers using genetic algorithms (GAs) for mitigating the
seismic response of structures
Mohtasham Mohebbi, Kazem Shakeri, Yavar Ghanbarpour and Hossein Majzoub
Journal of Vibration and Control published online 21 February 2012
DOI: 10.1177/1077546311434520

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Designing optimal multiple tuned mass ! The Author(s) 2012

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dampers using genetic algorithms (GAs) DOI: 10.1177/1077546311434520
jvc.sagepub.com
for mitigating the seismic response
of structures

Mohtasham Mohebbi1, Kazem Shakeri1, Yavar Ghanbarpour1

and Hossein Majzoub2

Abstract
In this paper an effective method has been proposed for designing optimal multiple tuned mass dampers (MTMDs) to
mitigate the seismic response of structures based on defining an optimization problem which considers the parameters
of tuned mass dampers (TMDs) as variables and minimization of maximum structural response as an objective function
while a number of constraints have been applied on TMDs response and parameters. The genetic algorithm (GA) has
been used successfully for solving the optimization problem. For illustration, for a ten-story linear shear frame subjected
to a filtered white noise excitation optimal MTMDs have been designed. The results have shown the simplicity and
convergence behavior of the method. It has also been concluded that the performance of MTMDs depends on TMDs
mass ratio, TMDs configuration and design criteria where increasing the TMDs mass ratio has improved monotonously
the performance of MTMDs especially for the domain of smaller values of the mass ratio, while for this case study the
number of TMDs has not been more effective. Testing the optimal MTMDs under near-field and far-field earthquakes
shows that the performance of MTMDs has been influenced by input excitation. The capability of the method in
considering the effect of higher modes has been shown.

Keywords
Genetic algorithm (GA), multiple tuned mass damper (MTMD), seismic response, structural control
Received: 11 July 2011; accepted: 5 December 2011

dampers (Soong and Dargush, 1997), visco-elastic dam-

1. Introduction
To protect structures against lateral loads passive,
active, semi-active and hybrid control systems have
been proposed (Spencer and Nagarajaiah, 2003). In
the area of active control and semi-active control sys-
tems some mechanisms such as active and semi-active
tuned mass dampers (TMDs), (Bahar et al., 2003;
Pinkaew et al., 2003), magnetorheological (MR)
damper (Xu et al., 2003) and active and semi-active
base isolation systems (Cheng et al., 2008; Chang and
Spencer, 2010) have been studied extensively in
researches. Passive control systems are simple and
attractive in practical applications, hence have been
studied extensively theoretically and experimentally in
previous studies. Different mechanisms such as mass
pers (Xu et al., 2004; Xu, 2007) and base isolation sys-
tems (Dolce et al., 2007) have been proposed for real
applications in this area. During past years through
extensive researches application of the TMD as a
kind of passive control system in reducing the response
of linear and nonlinear structures subjected to wind and
earthquake loads has been studied (Soong and
Dargush, 1997). Since the performance of a TMD
1
Engineering Department, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili, Iran
2
Islamic Azad University, Malekan, Iran
Corresponding author:
M Mohebbi, Engineering Department, University of Mohaghegh Ardabili,
Daneshghah Avenue, Ardabil 5619 911 367, Iran
Email: mohebbi@uma.ac.ir

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2 Journal of Vibration and Control 0(0)
depends on its parameters including mass, stiffness and
damping, hence different methods have been proposed
to determine the optimal value of TMD parameters
based on different design criteria. Some methods
which proposed for linear structures consider minimi-
zation the root-mean-square (RMS) of the structure
displacement or acceleration under white noise excita-
tion (Warburton, 1982), maximizing the effective damp-
ing of a structures equipped with a TMD (Luft, 1979),
minimizing the difference between the damping of the
first two modes of the structure-TMD system (Sadek
et al., 1997) and minimizing the H2 norm of response of
linear structures under white noise excitation (Hadi and
Arfiadi, 1998). Application of TMDs on nonlinear
structures has been studied in some researches such as
preliminary assessment of the seismic effectiveness of
TMDs for elastic-perfectly plastic single degree of free-
dom (SDOF) structures under earthquake motion
(Kaynia et al., 1981), investigating the effect of
ground motion characteristics on the effectiveness of
TMDs in reducing the maximum displacement of a
22-story nonlinear structure under moderate and
high-intensity earthquakes (Soto-Brito and Ruiz,
1999), indicating that the accumulated damage induced
in nonlinear structures should be used in conjunction
with the maximum displacement of the structure to
assess the effectiveness of the TMD (Lukkunaprasit
and Wanitkorkul, 2001; Pinkaew et al., 2003), studying
the effectiveness of TMDs on inelastic structures sub-
jected to earthquake ground motion from an energy
perspective (Wong, 2008) and designing optimal
TMDs for nonlinear frames (Mohebbi and Joghataie,
2011).
While a single TMD could be effective in reducing
the response of a structure under external excitations,
especially for wind-induced vibrations, it suffers from
some drawbacks such as a sensitivity problem to detun-
ing the TMD frequency, the TMD damping ratio and
uncertainty in the dynamic properties of the main struc-
ture. The mistuning of the TMD, variation of the TMD
damping and change in structural dynamic characteris-
tics cause significant reduction in the effectiveness of the
TMD. In the practical application of a TMD on tall
buildings it may require a heavy mass, consequently a
considerable space for its installation. For high-rise
buildings in which the higher modes may play a con-
siderable role on total response, designing a single
TMD tuned to the first mode of vibration may have a
little effect on controlling the response of higher modes.
To overcome these shortcomings, the application of
multiple tuned mass dampers (MTMDs) has been pro-
posed to be used instead of a single TMD (Xu and
Igusa, 1992). They concluded that the use of MTMDs
with distributed natural frequencies over a small range
of an SDOF natural frequency could be more
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effective than a single TMD with the same total mass.
Multiple tuned mass dampers can be used in parallel or
series configurations as well as located at one floor or
distributed over the floors of a building structural
system. It has been shown that the sensitivity of
MTMDs to the uncertainty of structural dynamic
parameters is less than a single TMD (Yamaguchi and
Harnpornchai, 1993; Abe and Fujino, 1994). Kareem
and Klein (1995) investigated the characteristics and
effectiveness of MTMDs with distributed nature fre-
quencies under both wind and earthquake excitations.
It was concluded that the performance of MTMDs
depends on the total number of dampers, damping
ratio and frequency range selected for designing optimal
MTMDs and the distribution of TMDs on the floors.
For designing MTMDs different approaches have
been used. In the early stages of designing MTMDs,
to simplify the analysis and design procedure, some
design constraints such as identical masses and damp-
ing ratios have been considered for TMDs. Following
these constraints Yamaguchi and Harnpornchai (1993)
studied the effect of different parameters of MTMDs on
an SDOF structure under harmonic excitations. Igusa
and Xu (1994) sought to generalize the optimal design
problem by relaxing the design constraints on the mass
and damping ratio of TMDs by using an asymptotic
analysis for designing MTMDs for an SDOF structure
subjected to a wide-band force. Jangid (1999) proposed
a method for determining the optimum parameters of
MTMDs for an undamped system subjected to har-
monic excitation. The method has been based on min-
imizing the steady-state displacement of the main
system by using a numerical searching technique. In a
design procedure proposed by Wu and Chen (2000), an
MTMDs system is divided into several groups, each
corresponding to one mode and consisting of several
dampers distributed on different floors. By developing
a sequential procedure, MTMDs were placed optimally
to minimize the acceleration of the structure. Li (2002)
studied the performance of five configurations of
MTMDs which include different combinations of
TMD parameters (mass, stiffness and damping) while
the optimality criterion has been as the minimization of
the displacement dynamic magnification factor
(DDMF) and the acceleration dynamic magnification
factor (ADMF) of a structure subjected to ground
acceleration. Hoang and Warnitchai (2005) proposed
a method for designing multiple TMDs to minimize
excessive vibration of MDOF linear structures by
using a numerical optimizer. The method considers a
gradient based nonlinear programming algorithm to
find the optimal parameters of TMDs where the
target response has been defined as a quadratic perfor-
mance index. It has been shown that the proposed
method is effective in determining a large number of
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Mohebbi et al. 3

TMDs parameters without imposing constraints before (GA) has been extensively used for solving optimization
analysis. To study the effectiveness and robustness of problem in most fields of engineering (Goldberg, 1989)
the MTMD, Dehghan-Niri et al. (2010) used a generic such as designing TMD for linear and nonlinear struc-
optimal methodology for designing MTMD systems to tures (Hadi and Arfiadi, 1998; Joghataie and Mohebbi,
mitigate the response of uncertain structures under har- 2007; Mohebbi and Joghataie, 2011). Therefore; in this
monic excitations. Moon (2010) investigated the effec- paper, too, it has been decided to use the GA for
tiveness of vertically distributed MTMDs along the designing optimal MTMDs.
height of a building. The vertically distributed In the following sections first the equation of motion
MTMDs theory can be used for controlling not only of structure-MTMDs will be presented, next a brief
the first mode but also the higher modes where the ver- explanation of proposed method and GA will be fol-
tically distributed TMD zones for each mode, is deter- lowed by a numerical example and conclusions.
mined based on its mode shape. Lin et al. (2010) studied
theoretically and experimentally the performance of 2. Structure - multiple tuned mass
MTMDs in reducing the seismic response of structures
with limitation on MTMDs stroke. They concluded
dampers equation of motion
that the MTMD’s stroke can be considered as a limi- The equation of motion of an n-degree-of-freedom
tation in the design procedure of optimal MTMDs and shear building frame with linear behavior for material
can be significantly controlled with little sacrifice of equipped with Ntmd TMDs located at the top floor in
structural control effectiveness. parallel configuration as shown in Figure 1 and sub-
Though the proposed methods in previous jected to an earthquake ground motion, x€ g ðtÞ, can be
researches have shown the capability of designing effi- written in the following form:
cient MTMDs they suffer from some limitations such as € þ ½C XðtÞ
_ þ ½K XðtÞ ¼ ½MeX€ g
constraints on distribution of TMDs stiffness and ½M XðtÞ ð1Þ
damping for simplifying the design procedure, tuning where [M], [K] and [C] are, respectively, the
the frequency of TMDs to a specified frequency of (n þ Ntmd)  (n þ Ntmd) mass, stiffness and damping
structural mode and need for extensive numerical anal- matrices, X, X_ and X€ ¼ displacement, velocity and
ysis. To overcome these shortcomings in this paper an
effective method has been proposed for designing opti-
mal MTMDs for MDOF linear structures subjected to
earthquake excitation based on defining an optimiza-
tion problem which considers the parameters of TMDs
(including mass, stiffness and damping of an individual
TMD) as design variables and minimizing an objective
function which is a function of structure response, while
some limitations are applied on the TMDs response
and its parameters as constraints. By solving the opti-
mization problem, the optimal values of TMDs param-
eters are determined through a simple and systematic
procedure. In the proposed method, the total response
of a structure is minimized instead of a specified mode
related response in optimization procedure, hence there
is no need to design multiple TMDs based on tuning to
the frequency of a specified mode to be controlled. This
benefit of the proposed method is important when
using MTMDs on tall buildings on which the effect of
higher modes can be considerable. Also in the proposed
method there is no need to consider constraints on
TMDs parameters distribution.
The optimization problem defined for determining
TMDs parameters, includes a large number of variables
especially when a large number of TMDs is used, hence
solving the optimization problem using the traditional
optimization methods such as gradient based methods Figure 1. n degree of freedom (DOF) structure equipped with
will be cumbersome and needs extensive numerical Ntmd tuned mass dampers in parallel configuration on the top
computations. On the other hand the genetic algorithm floor.

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4 Journal of Vibration and Control 0(0)

acceleration vectors relative to ground respectively, The equation of motion can be solved by using
eT ¼ [1,1,. . .,1]1  (n þ Ntmd) is ground acceleration- any numerical method where in this paper
mass transformation vector. By considering mdi, kdi and Wilson’s-y numerical integration method (Bathe,
cdi as the mass, stiffness and damping of the ith TMD, 1996) has been used.
[M], [K] and [C] matrices can be written as equations (2)
to (4).

2 3
m1 0  0 0 0 0  0 0
6 0 m2  0 0 0 0  0 0 7
6 . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 7
6 . 7
6 . . . . . . . . . . 7
6 7
6 0 0  mn1 0 0 0  0 0 7
6 7
6 0 0  0 mn 0 0  0 0 7
M¼6
6 0 0  0 0 m d1 0  0 0
7
7 ð2Þ
6 7
6 0 0  0 0 0 md2  0 0 7
6 7
6 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 7
6 . .  . . . . . . . 7
6 7
4 0 0  0 0 0 0  mdNtmd 1 0 5
0 0  0 0 0 0  0 mdNtmd

2 3
k1 þ k2 k2  0 0 0 0  0 0
6 k2 k2 þ k3  0 0 0 0  0 0 7
6 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 7
6 7
6 . . . . . . . . . . 7
6 7
6 0 0    kn1 þ kn kn 0 0  0 0 7
6 7
6 P
N tmd 7
6 0 0  kn kn þ kdi kd1 kd2    kdNtmd 1 kdNtmd 7
K¼6
6 i¼1
7
7 ð3Þ
6 0 0  0 kd1 kd1 0  0 0 7
6 7
6 0 0  0 kd2 0 kd2  0 0 7
6 7
6 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 7
6 . . . . . . . . . . 7
6 7
4 0 0  0 kdNtmd 1 0 0  kdNtmd 1 0 5
0 0  0 kdNtmd 0 0  0 kdNtmd

2 3
c1 þ c2 c2  0 0 0 0  0 0
6 c2 c2 þ c3  0 0 0 0  0 0 7
6 . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 7
6 . 7
6 . . . . . . . . . . 7
6 7
6 0 0    cn1 þ cn cn 0 0  0 0 7
6 7
6 P
N tmd 7
6 0 0  cn cn þ cdi cd1 cd2    cdNtmd 1 cdNtmd 7
C¼6
6 i¼1
7
7 ð4Þ
6 0 0  0 cd1 cd1 0  0 0 7
6 7
6 0 0  0 cd2 0 cd2  0 0 7
6 7
6 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 7
6 . .  . . . . . . . 7
6 7
4 0 0  0 cdNtmd 1 0 0  cdNtmd 1 0 5
0 0  0 cdNtmd 0 0  0 cdNtmd

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Mohebbi et al.
3. Optimal design of multiple tuned
mass dampers
In this paper for optimal design of MTMDs, an opti-
mization problem has been defined which considers the
minimization of structural response as objective func-
tion and the parameters of TMDs(including mass, stiff-
ness and damping of each TMD) as variables to be
determined while a number of constraints are consid-
ered on TMDs response or TMDs parameters. Hence,
the optimal values of TMDs parameters are determined
by solving the following optimization problem:
Find : Ti ¼ ðmdi , cdi , kdi Þ i ¼ 1, 2, . . . , Ntmd
Minimize : FðVÞ ¼ f ðv1 , v2 , . . . , vp Þ
Subject to:
H ¼ vector of equality constraints on response
and TMDs parameters:
J ¼ vector of inequality constraints on response
and TMDs parameters:
where Ti represents the vector of the TMDs parameters
mdi, cdi and kdi which are the mass, damping and stiff-
ness of the ith TMD, V ¼ p-dimensional vector used to
define the objective function, F(V), and constraints of
the optimization problem. Also H and J ¼ equality and
inequality constraints, respectively.
Because the optimization problem in the case of
using MTMDs has a large number of variables as
well as being sophisticated, using traditional optimiza-
tion techniques such as gradient based methods is con-
siderably complicated. Hence a powerful algorithm is
needed to solve the problem. In this paper the GA has
been utilized for solving the optimization problem
defined in equations (5a) to (5d).
Regarding the purpose of using TMDs, such as min-
imizing the maximum displacement, acceleration or
internal force, different functions can be considered as
an objective function, F(V).
In the previous researches on the MTMDs system,
different objectives have been considered in designing
MTMDs such as minimizing the steady-state displace-
ment of the main system under harmonic excitation
(Jangid, 1999), minimizing the maximum acceleration
of structure under a stochastic seismic load (Chen and
Wu, 2001), minimization of the DDMF and the
ADMF (Li, 2002), minimizing a quadratic performance
index (Hoang and Warnitchai, 2005), optimizing non-
uniformly distributed MTMD using a gradient-based
optimization method for minimizing the maximum
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5
displacement of the main structure under harmonic
excitation (Li and Ni, 2007), minimizing the frequency
response function of structure under harmonic loads
for interconnected and non-connected MTMDs
(Carneiro et al., 2008) and minimizing the maximum
displacement DMF as an effectiveness index and the
flatness of the maximum displacement DMF curve
versus error in natural frequency of structure as robust-
ness index (Dehghan-Niri et al., 2010). In MTMDs
design procedure, the parameters of TMDs are deter-
mined to minimize the objective function therefore, it is
clear that the performance of MTMDs in reducing a
specified response of structure depends on the objective
ð5aÞ used in design procedure. Though in the previous
researches different functions considered to be mini-
ð5bÞ mized as objective function but in all researches, the
main objective has been to improvement the perfor-
mance of structure regarding the safety and serviceabil-
ity criteria. Hence, in this paper it has been decided to
consider directly the minimization of the maximum dis-
ð5cÞ placement and maximum acceleration as safety and ser-
viceability of structure for the occupant’s comfort
criteria, respectively in an objective function of
MTMDs design problem.
ð5dÞ In the following section the optimization problem
based on minimizing the maximum displacement, has
been explained for an example.
3.1. Designing optimal multiple tuned mass
dampers for minimizing the maximum
displacement
The most commonly used criterion to assess the effec-
tiveness of an MTMD installed on a structure is its
capability to reduce the maximum displacement of the
structure. In this case, the optimization problem con-
sists of an objective function which includes minimizing
the maximum displacement, Xmax, and corresponding
constraints on the TMDs stroke length and its param-
eters as follows:
Find : md1 , cd1 , kd1 , . . . , mdNtmd , cdNtmd , kdNtmd ð6aÞ
  
Minimize : Xmax ¼ max xk ðiÞ, k ¼ 1, 2, . . . , kmax ,
i ¼ 1, 2, . . . , n ð6bÞ
Subject to : Xmax ðTMDÞ  XL ð6cÞ
0 5 mdi 5 mdmax i ¼ 1, 2, . . . , Ntmd ð6dÞ
0 5 kdi 5 kdmax i ¼ 1, 2, . . . , Ntmd ð6eÞ
0 5 cdi 5 cdmax i ¼ 1, 2, . . . , Ntmd ð6fÞ
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Xmax ðTMDÞ ¼ max XTMDi 
where XL ¼ the maximum stroke length of TMDs,
mdmax, cdmax and kdmax are the upper limit of mass,
damping and stiffness of the TMDs, Xmax(TMD) is the
maximum displacement of TMDs and kmax is the total
number of time steps. Since the performance of the
MTMDs system is affected by the TMDs stroke
length (Lin et al., 2010), hence a limitation on its max-
imum value has been considered as constraint.
By assuming a specified value for the total mass
ratio, , and uniform distribution for the TMDs
mass, the mass of each TMD can be considered as:
md1 ¼ md2 ¼    ¼ mdNtmd ¼ :
where mtot is the total mass of the structure. Hence in
this case the variables of optimization problem have
been the stiffness and damping of TMDs.
To solve the constrained optimization problem
defined in equations (6a) to (6g) using the GA, the
problem was first reformulated as an unconstrained
optimization problem following the penalty method
(Rao, 1984). Using the penalty method the complicated
constrained optimization problem is reduced to an
unconstrained optimization problem by introducing a
new objective function which is the sum of the original
objective function plus a penalty term for the violation
of the constraints of the original problem. By consider-
ing uniform distribution for TMDs mass, the optimiza-
tion problem has been as follows:
Find : cd1 , kd1 , . . . , cdNtmd , kdNtmd
Minimize : FðTÞ ¼ Xmax þ  max½0, g1 
XmaxðTMDÞ
g1 ¼ 1
XL
In the GA optimization procedure the stiffness and
damping of TMDs (cdi, kdi, i ¼ 1,2,. . .,Ntmd) are selected
from a specified domain with upper bounds limited to
cdmax and kdmax hence, the constraints of cdi and kdi
(equations (6e) to (6f)) have not been included
in unconstrained objective function defined in
equation (8b).
 and  are penalty parameters which can be deter-
mined either through parametric study or by trial and
error. Using different values for these parameters can
change the convergence speed but have no significant
effect on the final value of optimal answer (Joghataie
and Mohebbi, 2008; Joghataie and Mohebbi, 2009).
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i ¼ 1, 2, . . . , Ntmd ð6gÞ
4. Genetic algorithms
In the traditional optimization methods the domain is
searched using the gradient of the objective function
and the limitation of this method arises when the func-
tions of an objective function and the constraints of the
optimization problem are not continuous and it is not
possible to calculate the gradient of the functions. The
GA which has been developed by Holland (1975) is a
powerful computational method and has proven to be a
suitable and successful direct searching algorithm for
solving linear and/or nonlinear optimization problems
where the derivatives of the objective function and/or
constraints of the problem are not available or are hard
mtot to compute.
ð7Þ
Ntmd The GA starts with a discrete set of design vectors and
changes the current set towards generating a fitter gen-
eration of design points. There are three GA operators
including selection, cross over and mutation (Goldberg,
1989; Michalewics, 1996). In every generation, a set of
chromosomes is selected for mating based on their rela-
tive fitness. The fitters are given more chance of passing
their genes into the next generation. This operation of
selecting the better chromosomes is similar to what is
assumed to happen in the process of natural selection.
In this paper the stochastic universal sampling method
(Baker, 1987) has been used for selecting a number of
chromosomes for mating, based on their fitness values in
the current population as:
Fðxi Þ
Pðxi Þ ¼ N , i ¼ 1, 2, . . . , Nind ð9Þ
Pind
Fðxi Þ
i¼1
i ¼ 1, 2, . . . , Ntmd
where F(xi) ¼ fitness of chromosome xi,
ð8aÞ P(xi) ¼ probability of selection of xi and
Nind ¼ number of individuals.
ð8bÞ The selected chromosomes are then chosen ran-
domly through cross over to produce offspring. New
individuals have some parts of both parents genetic
ð8cÞ material. In this study the intermediate recombination
method (Mühlenbein and Schlierkamp-Voosen, 1993)
has been used for crossover, where values of newborns
genes are produced by adding the scaled difference
between the parent genes values to the first parent
genes value as follows:
O ¼ P1 þ ðP2  P1 Þ ð10Þ
where P1 and P2 are the parent chromosomes genes and
 is a scaling factor chosen randomly over [0.25, 1.25]
interval typically .This method uses a new  for each
pair of parents genes.
The mutation helps the GA to provide a guarantee
that the probability of searching any given
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Mohebbi et al. 7

Figure 2. Time history of the Kanai-Tajimi excitation, W(t), with peak ground acceleration (PGA) ¼ 0.475 g.

chromosomes will never be zero and helps the GA Table 1. Maximum response of uncontrolled frame subjected
escape local minima. At the final generation the chro- to white noise, W(t), excitation
mosome which has the best fitness is chosen as the opti-
Storey No. Disp.(cm) Acc.(cm/s2) Drift(cm)
mum point.
Since for real-valued numerical optimization prob- 1 2.17 345.35 2.17
lems, real-valued coding representations offer certain 2 4.30 571.60 2.13
advantages such as simple programming, less memory 3 6.28 708.65 1.99
required and greater freedom to use different genetic 4 8.01 708.89 1.76
operators over binary versions (Arfiadi and Hadi, 2001; 5 9.50 749.88 1.64
Jenkins, 2002) hence, in this paper the real-valued coding 6 10.75 719.11 1.57
has been used to represent the chromosomes. Also in this
7 11.86 713.77 1.38
paper the elitist strategy has been used which allows
8 12.88 713.73 1.12
Nelites of the best chromosomes in the current population
to go to the next generation without modification. The 9 13.63 730.84 0.79
rest of the chromosomes in the population are replaced 10 14.03 802.68 0.41
by Nins inserted newborns. Hence: Disp. ¼ displacement, Acc. ¼ acceleration.

Nelites ¼ Nind  Nins ð11Þ

5. Numerical example
In this paper to assess the effectiveness of the proposed Table 2. Stiffness, damping and frequency of optimal TMDs
when Ntmd ¼ 10 and  ¼ 2%.
method in designing optimal MTMDs as well as to
evaluate the usefulness of MTMDs in improving the TMD md(tons) kd(kN/m) cd(N.sec/m) f(Hz)
performance of structures under earthquake excita-
tions, a ten-story shear frame with uniform mass, 1 7.2 180.819 0.001 0.798
damping and stiffness for all stories has been consid- 2 7.2 232.619 136.995 0.905
ered, assuming linear material behavior for structure 3 7.2 189.575 6775.277 0.817
and TMDs. The properties of each story are as follows: 4 7.2 327.210 573.362 1.073
5 7.2 317.811 0.196 1.058
mi ¼ 360 tonsð1 ton ¼ 9810 NÞ, ki ¼ 650 MN=m and 6 7.2 274.910 0.030 0.984
ci ¼ 6:2 MN  s=m i ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; 10 ð12Þ 7 7.2 362.169 8.208 1.129
8 7.2 195.782 2.048 0.830
In this paper one-dimensional earthquake loading 9 7.2 211.580 19698.371 0.863
has been simulated in the optimization procedure by
10 7.2 2025.670 1.362 2.671
passing a Gaussian White Noise process through

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Figure 3. Convergence of genetic algorithm (GA) to optimum answer for different runs (a): the best objective function during
generations; (b): objective function of chromosomes at final generation; and (c): objective function of chromosomes at 1st and final
generations.

Kanai-Tajimi filter (Kanai, 1961; Tajimi, 1960) with where, S is constant spectral density and g and !g
power spectral density function given by: are the ground damping and frequency, respectively.
2 3 In this paper, g ¼ 0.3 and !g ¼ 37.3 (rad/sec) have
4 2 2 2
been used for numerical simulations. The time history
6 ! g þ 4! 
g g ! 7 of the Kanai-Tajimi excitation, W(t), with peak ground
sð!Þ ¼ S 4 2 5 ð13Þ
!2  !2g þ4!2g g2 !2 acceleration (PGA) ¼ 0.475 g used for designing opti-
mal MTMDs, has been shown in Figure 2. In this
paper, to explain the procedure of the proposed
0:03g
S ¼   ð14Þ method and also for the assessment of the performance
!g 4g2 þ 1 of the optimally designed MTMDs, this excitation has
been selected as a sample excitation. To design

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Figure 4. Normalized maximum response of controlled structure under W(t) excitation when  ¼ 2% and Ntmd ¼ 10.
MTMDs for a specific site, the design record for the site
with a proper acceleration scale factor or multiple
ground acceleration records should be used in the anal-
ysis and optimization.
The uncontrolled structure subjected to W(t) exci-
tation where the maximum value of an uncontrolled
structure response has been reported in Table 1 which
shows that the maximum displacement of the structure
has been Xmax ¼ 14.03 cm.
5.1. Designing optimal multiple tuned mass
dampers for minimizing the maximum
displacement when Ntmd ¼ 10 and  ¼ 2%
To illustrate the procedure of the proposed method for
designing optimal MTMDs, by considering MTMDs
located on the top floor of a structure in parallel con-
figuration, also assuming the total mass ratio,  ¼ 2%,
the numbers of TMDs, Ntmd ¼ 10, and uniform distri-
bution for the TMDs mass, the optimal values of stiff-
ness and damping of each TMD are determined so that
the maximum displacement of the structure is mini-
mized under W(t) excitation according to the equa-
tions (8a) to (8c). In this section, the values for mass
ratio and number of the TMDs have been selected as a
sample to explain the detail of the procedure while in
the following section to assess the effect of mass ratio
and numbers of TMDs on performance of MTMDs,
the results have been reported for different values of
TMDs mass ratio and number.
The parameters of the optimization problem have
been considered as follows:
XL ¼ 150 cm, kdmax ¼ 40 MN=m, cdmax ¼ 2 MN  s=m
ð15Þ
1 1
¼ ¼ ,  ¼ 150
XmaxðUnconÞ 14:03ðcmÞ
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mtot
md1 ¼ md2 ¼    ¼ mdNtmd ¼ : ¼ 7:2 tons ð17Þ
Ntmd
For solving the optimization problem, the following
parameters have been considered for the GA:
Number of individuals in each generation ¼ 25,
Number of elites in each generation ¼ 2,
Number of the newborns in each generation ¼ 25,
Mutation rate ¼ 0:04
For solving the optimization problem defined in
(8a) to (8c) using GA, 25 randomly vectors (chromo-
somes) of the MTMDs parameters (Ti(cdi, kdi),
i ¼ 1,2,. . .,10) were generated as the initial population
which each chromosome includes 20 variables (genes).
For the generated values of MTMDs parameters, the
maximum displacement of the structure and the max-
imum displacement of the TMDs were recorded.
Iteratively, the populations were modified according
to the GA so that new generations were generated
until convergence was achieved. By monitoring the
value of objective function for all the MTMDs param-
eters in every generation, the fittest individual of that
generation was identified. To guarantee the accuracy
of the optimization procedure, different runs have
been done in the GA for Ntmd ¼ 10 and  ¼ 2%.
Figure 3 shows the convergence behavior of the GA,
including the variation of the best fitness during gen-
erations of the GA, the fitness value of chromosomes
at the final generation for four runs and the value of
objective function for each chromosome at 1st and
final generation for the best run. Results show that
different runs have ended approximately with the
same optimum answer but with different convergence
ð16Þ
speed. Also it has been shown that at the final gener-
ation most of the individuals have the same fitness,
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Figure 5. Maximum response of uncontrolled and controlled structures under (a): El-Centro (1940); (b): Hachinohe (1968);
(c): Northridge (1994); and (d): Kobe (1995) testing excitations when  ¼ 2% and Ntmd ¼ 10.

which shows the convergence behavior of the proce-
dure. Noticing the results, it can be concluded
that the proposed method has been effective in
designing optimal MTMDs regarding the simplicity
and convergence behavior. The optimum value
has been F(T*) ¼ 0.436, Xmax ¼ 6.12 cm and
Xmax(TMD) ¼ 150 cm.
The stiffness, damping and frequency of optimal
TMDs have been reported in Table 2. From the results,
it is clear that the stiffness, damping and frequency of
optimal TMDs at optimum point have been different
and the parameters of the TMDs, especially the damp-
ing of the TMDs, have been distributed in a wide range.
The parameters of the TMDs in Table 2 have been

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Figure 6. Normalized maximum (a): displacement; (b): drift; and (c): acceleration of controlled structure under W(t) excitation for
different values of total mass ratio and tuned mass dampers number.

determined based on minimizing the maximum dis-
placement and no restriction has been imposed on
damping and stiffness values of the TMDs to be deter-
mined in a specific range. Hence, the obtained values
are optimal values which minimize the maximum dis-
placement though the ranges of optimal values of kd
and cd, especially damping of the TMDs, are extremely
broad. The results have been determined under some
assumptions such as the same mass for the TMDs,
locating the TMDs on the top floor in a parallel con-
figuration and selecting minimizing the maximum dis-
placement as an objective function. Based on the results
of numerical analysis, it can be said that the parameters
of TMDs and their range in optimum point depends on
some factors such as TMDs mass ratio and number,
TMDs configuration, input excitation and the type of

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Figure 7. Normalized maximum (a): displacement; (b): drift; and (c): acceleration of controlled structure under testing earthquakes
for different tuned mass dampers number when  ¼ 4%.
objective function. To discuss the range of optimal
TMDs frequency and damping ratio also to assess the
effect of different factors on the range of optimal TMDs
parameters, there is a need to conduct a complete
research and extensive numerical analysis on which
some information can be found in related researches
(Zuo and Nayfeh, 2005; Li and Ni, 2007). In this
paper, a detailed explanation about the frequency of
optimal TMDs for different numbers of TMDs and
comparing the frequencies of TMDs with structure
vibration modes frequency is given in another part of
the paper.
The maximum response of a controlled structure
including displacement, drift and acceleration has
been divided to corresponding values of uncontrolled
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structure and shown in Figure 4. It has been found that
by using MTMDs when  ¼ 2% and Ntmd ¼ 10, it is
possible to have about 57%, 49% and 12% reduction
in maximum displacement and drift and acceleration,
respectively. It is clear that though the objective func-
tion has been minimizing the maximum displacement
the maximum acceleration has been reduced for all
stories, too.
5.2. Testing optimal multiple tuned mass
dampers under different earthquakes
To assess the effectiveness of optimal MTMDs designed
for  ¼ 2% and Ntmd ¼ 10, in mitigating the response of
a structure under other real earthquakes which are
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Figure 8. Reduction in maximum (a): displacement; and (b): acceleration of structure subjected to W(t) excitation versus different
values of multiple tuned mass dampers mass ratio for both objective functions when Ntmd ¼ 5.
different in peak ground acceleration and frequency
content with design excitation, W(t), the uncontrolled
and controlled structures have been tested under
El-Centro (1940, PGA ¼ 0.34 g), and Hachinohe
(1968, PGA ¼ 0.23 g) records as far-field earthquakes
as well as Northridge (1994, 0.84 g) and Kobe (1995,
0.83 g) records as near-field earthquakes, respectively.
The maximum displacements and acceleration of
uncontrolled and controlled structures have been
shown in Figure 5.
According to the results it can be said that (1) by
using MTMDs not only the maximum values of the
structure response but also the response of all stories
have been decreased under all earthquakes; (2) the
effectiveness of MTMDs depends on the characteristics
of the earthquake which in this case study the best per-
formance has been achieved under El-Centro (1940)
excitation as a far-field earthquake while the worst per-
formance has been under Northridge (1994) excitation
which is a near-field and sever earthquake; (3) since the
performance of MTMDs depends on the characteristics
of the earthquake; hence in designing MTMDs for a
special area, the design earthquake of that area should
be used as the design record.
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5.3. Optimal multiple tuned mass dampers for
different values of total mass and tuned mass
dampers number
To assess the effect of TMDs total mass and number on
the effectiveness of MTMDs, using the proposed
method for designing MTMDs, optimal MTMDs
have been designed for different values of total mass
ratio and TMDs number when the structure subjected
to W(t). The maximum displacement, drift and acceler-
ation of the controlled frame have been normalized to
maximum uncontrolled response and shown in Figure 6
for different values of total mass ratio,  and Ntmd.
Based on the results, it has been concluded that the
effectiveness of MTMDs depends on the TMDs total
mass where increasing the total mass has led to
MTMDs better performance in reducing the maximum
displacement of the structure, especially for smaller
values of the mass ratio. Noticing the results shows
while the objective has been minimizing the maximum
displacement; by increasing the TMDs mass ratio the
maximum acceleration has been reduced more for most
values of TMDs mass ratio, too, except for some cases
such as 10 and 15 TMDs in Figure 6(c). Since the
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Figure 9. Reduction in maximum displacement and acceleration for both objective functions under (a-1,2): El-Centro (1940); (b-1,2):
Hachinohe (1968); (c-1,2): Northridge (1994); and (d-1,2): Kobe (1995) testing excitations versus different values of multiple tuned
mass dampers mass ratio when Ntmd ¼ 5.

results shown in Figure 6 have been based on minimiz-
ing the maximum displacement, hence we have no lim-
itation on maximum acceleration of structure to be
reduced more by increasing the mass ratio. Therefore;
in this case study for larger TMD mass ratios, by
increasing the mass ratio of MTMDs a small increase
in maximum acceleration has been obtained.
Based on the results shown in Figure 6 it can be said
that in this case study which uses uniform mass for all
TMDs also placing TMDs on the top floor for a spe-
cified value of TMDs total mass, the performance of
MTMDs has not been affected significantly by the
number of TMDs. In the previous studies on
MTMDs system which use different assumptions on
TMDs parameters and design procedure, the effect
of TMDs number on MTMDs performance has
been investigated. It has been concluded that after a
certain number of TMDs, the improvement in effective-
ness or robustness of MTMDs has not been significant
(Li, 2000; Zuo and Nayfeh, 2005; Li and Ni 2007) and
in some cases, for a specified mass ratio increasing the
number of TMDs may lead to decrease the effectiveness
of MTMDs which the detailed reason for this phenom-
enon could be found in Li and Liu (2002). However,
before generalizing the result of the TMDs number
effect; it is necessary to carry out extensive numerical
researches by considering different structural models,
various mass distributions for TMDs and different
numbers of TMDs.
In Figure 6, while increasing the number of TMDs
has not changed the effectiveness of MTMDs it offers a
smaller size for an individual TMD which is more

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Figure 10. Normalized maximum displacement and acceleration for parallel and series configurations under W(t) excitation versus
different values of multiple tuned mass dampers mass ratio when Ntmd ¼ 5.

Figure 11. Normalized maximum displacement and acceleration for parallel and series configurations under (a): El-Centro (1940);
(b): Hachinohe (1968); (c): Northridge (1994); and (d): Kobe (1995) testing excitations versus different values of multiple tuned mass
dampers mass ratio when Ntmd ¼ 5.

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Figure 12. Maximum (a): displacement and (b): acceleration for parallel, series and distributing configurations under W(t) excitation
when Ntmd ¼ 10 and  ¼ 2%.
attractive regarding the ease of installation as con-
cluded in previous researches (Moon, 2010) and
increases the robustness of the MTMDs system
(Li, 2000; Zuo and Nayfeh, 2005). Also Figure 6 can
be used as design guideline for determining the optimal
value of the TMDs total mass to mitigate the response
of the structure to a desired level.
Figure 7 shows the normalized value of maximum
response of a controlled structure under testing earth-
quakes for  ¼ 4% and a different number of TMDs as
an example. According to the results it is clear that the
number of TMDs has no significant effect on the per-
formance of MTMDs while increasing the mass ratio of
MTMDs has led to increase the efficiency of MTMDs
under all testing earthquakes. For other TMDs mass
ratio similar results have been achieved that, because of
space limitation, have not been reported here.
5.4. Designing optimal multiple tuned mass
dampers based on minimizing the
maximum acceleration
To study the effectiveness of MTMDs in reducing
the acceleration of a structure as serviceability of
the structure for the occupant’s comfort criterion,
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it was decided to design optimal MTMDs for min-
imizing the maximum acceleration. Following the
same procedure explained for minimizing the maxi-
mum displacement, optimal MTMDs have been
designed when the structure, subjected to W(t) exci-
tation and equipped with Ntmd ¼ 5 TMDs located on
a top floor in parallel configuration. Figure 8 shows
the reduction in maximum displacement and acceler-
ation of the structure for different MTMDs mass
ratio for both objective functions including minimi-
zation of maximum displacement or acceleration.
Comparing the results shows that (1) increasing the
MTMDs mass ratio has improved its performance in
reducing the maximum acceleration; (2) as expected,
to achieve more reduction in a specified response it
is better to include that response as an objective
function; (3) though the minimizing maximum accel-
eration has been the main objective, the maximum
displacement has been mitigated, too, where the
maximum displacement has been decreased more in
comparison with maximum acceleration for both
objective functions, hence it can be said that
MTMDs have been more effective in reducing the
maximum displacement in comparison with maxi-
mum acceleration.
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Figure 13. Normalized maximum (a): displacement; (b): drift and (d): acceleration of structure under testing excitations for different
tuned mass dampers configurations when Ntmd ¼ 10 and  ¼ 2%.

The controlled structure, equipped with optimal
MTMDs designed for minimizing the maximum dis-
placement or acceleration using Ntmd ¼ 5, subjected to
testing earthquakes and reduction in maximum dis-
placement and acceleration, has been reported in
Figure 9. From the results it is clear that using mini-
mizing the maximum acceleration as an objective func-
tion in designing MTMDs has not helped MTMDs to
achieve a better performance in reducing the maximum
acceleration under testing earthquakes. Also there is no
significant difference between the values of reduction in
maximum displacement obtained for both objective
functions except for displacement under El-Centro
(1940) earthquake.
5.5. Effect of multiple tuned mass dampers
configuration
To assess the effect of TMDs configuration in perfor-
mance of a MTMD, it has been decided to design
an optimal MTMD for different configurations as
follows:

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Figure 14. The frequency of optimal tuned mass dampers for different number of tuned mass dampers when  ¼ 2%.
5.5.1. Case (a): TMDs series configuration. In this case
TMDs have been installed in a series configuration on
the top floor of the structure. For Ntmd ¼ 5 and
XL ¼ 150 cm, optimal MTMDs have been designed
under W(t) for minimizing the maximum displacement
of a structure by considering the same upper and lower
bound considered for TMDs parameters in parallel
configuration. Figure 10 shows the normalized maxi-
mum displacement and acceleration of controlled struc-
tures for both parallel (P) and series (S) configurations.
Beside the existing difficulty in the application of TMDs
in series configuration, results show that for this case
study using series configuration has led to decrease the
effectiveness of MTMDs in reducing both maximum
displacement and acceleration where the difference
between both configurations has been increased by
increasing MTMDs mass ratio. This conclusion is
related to uniform mass distribution for TMDs, con-
sidering the same upper and lower bounds for TMDs
parameters in both parallel and series configurations as
well as design procedure of this research. By consider-
ing larger values for the upper bound of stiffness and
damping of TMDs in series configuration the results
may have some changes especially for the larger
values of TMDs mass ratio. Carneiro et al. (2008) has
shown that for MTMDs system with series configura-
tion, when using non-uniform mass distribution for
TMDs, its performance is improved by concentrating
a greater portion of mass on the first TMD and by
selecting a proper set for TMDs mass distribution in
series configuration both configurations could have
similar performance. In this research all TMDs have
identical mass in both configurations hence; the parallel
configuration works better than series configuration
especially for larger values of TMDs mass ratio the
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effectiveness of which is increased by increasing the
mass ratio as shown in Figure 6(a). It can be concluded
that the difference between the performances of both
configurations is more noticeable in reducing the max-
imum displacement which is related to the objective
function considered in the design procedure.
The normalized response of a controlled structure
under testing earthquakes for both series and a parallel
configuration has been reported in Figure 11 which
shows that using a parallel configuration has been effec-
tive under all earthquakes or at least works approxi-
mately as well as series configuration.
5.5.2. Case (b): Distributing TMDs over the floors. In this
case one TMD has been located on each floor of the
structure. For numerical simulations assuming
Ntmd ¼ 10, XL ¼ 150 cm and  ¼ 2% optimal MTMDs
have been designed when the objective has been mini-
mizing the maximum displacement of structure under
W(t) excitation. Figure 12 shows the maximum dis-
placement and acceleration of uncontrolled and con-
trolled structures under W(t) excitation for parallel
(P), series (S) and distributing (D) configurations.
Results show about 42% and 4.5% reduction in max-
imum displacement and acceleration for distributing
configuration while the corresponding values have
been 57% and 12% for parallel configuration also
39% and 6.5% for series configuration. Hence, it can
be said that for this case study, which uses uniform
mass distributing for TMDs and the same upper and
lower bound for TMDs parameters in all configura-
tions, distributing TMDs over structure floors has led
to a decrease in the efficiency of the MTMD system in
reducing the maximum response of the structure in
comparison with parallel configuration while it has
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worked approximately similar to series configuration.
Also regarding the installation difficulty, the distribu-
tion configuration is preferred to series configuration.
Figure 13 shows the normalized response of a con-
trolled structure for different configurations under test-
ing earthquakes for Ntmd ¼ 10 and  ¼ 2%. Results
show that the parallel configuration has been more
effective under testing earthquakes, too.
5.6. Optimal tuned mass dampers frequency
In most previous researches in designing MTMDs,
TMDs have been designed so that the frequency of
TMDs is tuned to the frequency of first vibration
mode or distributed over a specified domain (Xu and
Igusa, 1992; Kareem and Klein, 1995). Since the pro-
posed method in this research for designing MTMDs is
not based on tuning the frequency of TMDs to a spe-
cified mode frequency, it is noticeable to compare the
frequency of optimal TMDs with the frequency of
structure vibration modes. To this end, for  ¼ 2%
and different number of TMDs under W(t) excitation,
the frequency of optimal TMDs as well as the fre-
quency of 1st, 2nd and 3rd modes of the structure
have been calculated and shown in Figure 14. Results
show that in this case study, for Ntmd ¼ 1, the frequency
of TMD is 99% of 1st mode frequency. This result
confirms the similarity of the proposed method in deter-
mining optimal frequency of a single TMD to previous
studies in which the frequency of the TMD is approx-
imately tuned to the frequency of 1st mode. For
Ntmd ¼ 5, 10 and 15 most number of TMDs tend to
be tuned to first vibration mode while for Ntmd ¼ 10
and 15 one TMD has been tuned to 2nd vibration
mode which could be effective in reducing the response
of 2nd mode related response. It can be concluded that
since the proposed method considers minimizing the
total response of structure in designing MTMDs
instead of a specified mode related response, hence
the method can consider the effect of higher modes.
The proposed method can be used effectively for
designing optimal MTMDs for tall buildings on
which the higher modes could have considerable effect
on the total response of the structure. However to gen-
eralize this conclusion more studies should be con-
ducted on different frames equipped with different
TMDs number as well as considering different config-
urations of MTMDs and various design criteria.
6. Conclusions
In this paper an effective method has been proposed for
optimal design of MTMDs for mitigating the response
of multi degree of freedom (MDOF) structures sub-
jected to earthquake excitations. The method has
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been based on defining an optimization problem
which considers the minimization of maximum
response of a structure as an objective function and
the parameters of TMDs as design variables while
some constraints defined on the TMDs maximum
stroke length and TMDs parameters for the purpose
of application limitations. The GA has been used suc-
cessfully for solving the optimization problem in order
to determine the parameters of TMDs. To assess the
effectiveness of the proposed method, a ten-story shear
frame with linear behavior for material subjected to a
white noise excitation filtered passing Kanai-Tajimi
filter and for different values of MTMDs total mass
ratio and the number of TMDs, optimal MTMDs
have been designed for minimizing the maximum dis-
placement and acceleration as design criteria. The
results of numerical simulations show the capability
of the GA in solving the MTMDs design problem
which includes a large number of variables, regarding
the simplicity and convergence behavior. It has been
concluded that increasing the mass ratio of MTMDs
has improved the performance of MTMDs especially
for smaller value of mass ratio while in this case study,
the number of TMDs has not affected significantly the
effectiveness of MTMDs. Testing optimal MTMDs
under far-field and near-field earthquakes which are
different in frequency content and peak ground accel-
eration (PGA) with design excitation, shows that
MTMDs have been effective in reducing the response
of structure under testing earthquakes while the
amount of reduction depends on the characteristics of
earthquakes. Hence, in designing MTMDs in a specific
area a proper excitation of that region, should be con-
sidered as a design record. Designing optimal MTMDs
based on different configurations for TMDs shows
dependency of MTMDs effectiveness on TMDs config-
uration which in this case study with uniform mass dis-
tribution for TMDs, the parallel configuration has been
more effective in comparison with series and distribut-
ing configurations. Comparing the frequency of opti-
mal TMDs for a different number of TMDs shows
that the proposed method has the capability of tuning
the frequency of TMDs to different structural vibration
modes frequency. Since the proposed method considers
the mitigation of the total response of the structure
instead of reducing the response of a specified mode,
it could therefore be recommended as an effective
method for designing MTMDs for tall buildings, on
which the higher modes may have an effective role on
the total response of the structure.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any
funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit
sectors.
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