A Comparative Performance Study of Inertial Vibration Controllers for an Ultra-lightweight GFRP Footbridge

Currently, the use of advanced lightweight materials in construction (as aluminium or fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) composites) are enabling to create aesthetically pleasing structural forms by means of reducing their weight as much as possible. The results of this are ultra-lightweight structures (usually with low both mass and inherent damping) which difficultly comply with the vibration serviceability limit state (VSLS) under human-induced dynamic loading. Moreover, when assessing VSLS, the existing human-structure interaction (HIS) should be considered as it tends to be remarkable. Hence, smart damping strategies can be seen as a good solution to preserve lightweight nature of these structures in the most efficient way. This work aims to investigate whether the efficiency of three types of inertial controllers applied to an ultra-lightweight FRP footbridge degrades or not, when considering the HSI as another inherent element of the dynamic system to be controlled.