Estimating the added effective damping of SDOF systems incorporating multiple dynamic vibration absorbers with nonlinear damping

Multiple dynamic vibration absorbers (MDVAs) employ multiple auxiliary masses tuned to frequencies near the structural frequency to reduce building motions. Added effective damping is often used to quantify the structural motion reduction attributed to the structural control system. However, the level of added effective damping by a MDVA system is difficult to verify in the field.This study presents a simple method to predict the effective …