Seismic response of seven existing reinforced concrete chimneys equipped with tuned mass dampers under five strong seismic events

The seismic response of seven existing reinforced concrete chimneys equipped with optimized Tuned Mass Dampers (TMDs) are investigated under five acceleration time histories recorded during different important European seismic events. For each chimney, the features of the TMDs are detected by nonlinear dynamic analyses, starting from the investigation about the optimum mass ratio (between the optimum mass of the TMD and the mass of the chimney without the TMD involved in the most representative vibrational modes). By the application of sinusoidal forces, the contribute of the TMDs are evaluated by the estimation of the equivalent damping ratio.