Summary This paper investigates the use of a two‐terminal vibration suppression device in a building. The use of inerter‐spring‐damper configurations for a multi‐storey building structure is considered. The inerter has been used in Formula 1 racing cars and applications to various systems such as road vehicles have been identified. Several devices that incorporate inerter(s), as well as spring(s) and damper(s), have also been identified for vibration suppression of building structures. These include the tuned inerter damper and the tuned viscous mass damper. In this paper, a three‐storey building model with a two‐terminal absorber located at the bottom subjected to base excitation is studied. The brace stiffness is also taken into consideration. Four optimum absorber layouts, in terms of how spring, damper and inerter components should be arranged, for minimising the maximum relative displacements of the building are obtained with respect to the inerter's size and the brace stiffness. The corresponding parameter values for the optimum absorber layouts are also presented. Furthermore, a real‐life earthquake data is used to show the advantage of proposed absorber configurations. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Linear passive vibration absorbers, such as tuned mass dampers, often contain springs, dampers and masses, although recently there has been a growing trend to employ or supplement the mass elements with inerters. When considering possible configurations with these elements broadly, two approaches are normally used: one structurebased and one immittance-based. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. In this paper, a new approach is proposed: the structureimmittance approach. Using this approach, a full set of possible series-parallel networks with predetermined numbers of each element type can be represented by structural immittances, obtained via a proposed general formulation process. Using the structural immittances, both the ability to investigate a class of absorber possibilities together (advantage of the immittance-based approach), and the ability to control the complexity, topology and element values in resulting absorber configurations (advantages of the structure-based approach) are provided at the same time. The advantages of the proposed approach are demonstrated through two case studies on building vibration suppression and automotive suspension design, respectively.

Summary This paper provides a complete realisation of a special class of positive‐real bicubic impedances. The problem is motivated by the concept of the inerter, which is the mechanical dual of a capacitor. This device allows mechanical network synthesis, by completing the electrical mechanical analogy. With mechanical synthesis, the emphasis is to minimise the number of elements required to allow feasible implementation. The definitions of simple‐series‐parallel networks and essential‐regular positive‐real functions are introduced. The simple‐series‐parallel minimum‐reactive networks that can realise all essential‐regular bicubics are identified and grouped into six network quartets. One of the advantages of these networks is that they contain the minimal number of reactive elements. The necessary and sufficient realisability conditions for all these networks, as well as corresponding element values, are then derived. Finally, numerical examples are provided to illustrate the validity of the theoretical results. In the course of the argument, interesting conclusions regarding essential‐regular bilinear and biquadratic functions have also been presented. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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This paper investigates the use of two two-terminal vibration suppression devices in a building and assesses the performance benefits over those achieved using a single device. The inerter-combined configurations for a multi-storey building structure are considered. The inerter is a two-terminal device, with the property that the applied force is proportional to the relative acceleration across its terminals. In this paper, a five-storey building model with two absorbers of the same kind subjected to base excitation is studied, where one is located between ground and the first floor and the other is between the first and second floors of the building. Three passive suppression layouts, two dampers, two tuned inerter dampers, and two tuned viscous mass dampers are considered. The optimal configurations for minimising the maximum interstorey drifts of the building are obtained with respect to the inerter's size and the damping boundary. The corresponding parameter values are also presented. For the sake of comparison, the single device mounted between the ground and first floor is also considered.Finally, with specific inertance and damping values, the frequency response is provided to show the potential advantage of the proposed optimal configurations. It is demonstrated that the optimal configurations with a pair of devices are more effective than the optimal single device with equal total inertance and the same total damping boundary. The approach demonstrated in this paper is applicable to the investigation of using more than two devices for multistorey buildings. KEYWORDS a pair of absorbers, base excitation, Inerter, structural control, vibration suppression Struct Control Health Monit. 2020;27:e2498.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/stc