Summary
In this work, the vibration attenuation capabilities of a negative stiffness device, termed NegSV, are studied. This nonlinear mechanism can be mounted to multi-storey frame structures, exploiting the partial mass resonance concept, where the top part of the frame effectively acts as a resonator defined with respect to the lower part. An appropriate geometrically nonlinear configuration is used for tuning the stiffness of a specified storey to achieve the aforementioned effect. Mitigation of vibration can subsequently be succeeded in terms of reducing the accelerations and inter-storey drifts in the lower parts of the structure, reducing base shear demand. An optimization of the design is further pursued with the use of a suitably architected objective function, where a set of optimal parameters can be determined exploiting the nonlinear properties of the NegSV. Significant improvements are observed in the dynamic response of the modified structure, compared to the original, showing potential towards structural protection in realistic scenarios.
