Tuned Mass Dampers

A Tuned Mass Damper – TMD – is a damper that stabilize motion caused by harmonic vibration. Practical systems are tuned to either move the main mode away from a troubling excitation frequency, or to add damping to a resonance that is difficult or expensive to damp directly Wide span structures (bridges, stairs, roofs) can be excited to high vibration amplitudes in one of their basic mode shapes, for example by wind or people walking.

Low natural frequencies as well as low internal damping are typical for many of these large structures. With Tuned Mass Dampers these vibrations can be reduced very effectively. A TMD consists of a spring, a oscillating mass and a damper where both the spring stiffness and the mass is adjustable to fine tune the resonance frequency exactly to the structure and its certain natural frequency, meaning each solution is unique. In case of horizontal and torsional excitation please see info under Industrial solutions.

Based on our successful design, we dimension and manufacture customized TMD solutions on request.