Preliminary numerical study on TRID system for flutter vibration control of bridge structure

Based on the recently proposed innovative Tuned Rotary Inertia Damper (abbreviated as TRID) control system, the possibility of its application for the wind induced flutter vibration control of long span bridge structure: is discussed in this paper. Firstly, the background and current methods for wind induced flutter vibration control of bridge structures are summarized. Then, equations of motion of the bridge segment model are developed based on the classical Lagrange principle, and the critical wind speed of flutter vibration of Humen Bridge is solved using both Scanlan and state space based methods. Furthermore, the TRID control system is incorporated into the system model, where the TRID inertia mass can be physically installed between connections of consecutive bridge deck sections. Optimal parameters of TRID control system and their interactions, i.e. tuning frequency ratio, damping ratio and rotary inertia ratio, are analyzed through numerical approaches. Based on thorough numerical analysis, the results show that the TRID control system is feasible and effective on enhancing the flutter vibration stability of long span bridge structures, e.g. the ultimate critical wind speed of the illustration can be increased by 10% at the cost of adding an additional 5% rotary inertia to the bridge structure.