Passive damping of suspension bridges using multi-degree of freedom tuned mass dampers

Tuned Mass Dampers (TMDs) are a very popular, economical and robust way of mitigating the dynamic response of civil engineering structures. However, their classical implementation involves as many TMDs as there are critical modes. This paper analyzes a TMD with two degrees of freedom targeted at mitigating simultaneously a bending and a torsion mode of a bridge deck. The system parameters can be tuned independently for the bending and the torsion mode. The study is conducted numerically and experimentally on a laboratory mock-up of a suspension bridge.