H∞ optimization of fluid viscous dampers for reducing vibrations of high-speed railway bridges

Abstract

This work deals with the optimization of fluid viscous damper systems (FVDs) to reduce the resonant dynamic structural response of high-speed railway bridges by algebraic and numerical approaches. The presented method chooses the objective function based on the H∞ norm over the frequency band of interest. This function allows taking into account structural damping properties and minimizing simultaneously the structural response associated with multiple modes. Especially, the proposed objective function may also be extended to nonlinear problems to determine optimal parameters of nonlinear fluid viscous dampers which may be an interesting solution in applications where high force levels are expected in the dampers. Finally, the proposed method is validated through numerical simulations. The simulation results show that the optimal FVD coefficients obtained by using the presented method are more exact than those by the previous method. Besides, the effectiveness of the method for solving the problems with the contribution of high modes and the consideration of nonlinear FVDs is also proved.