Nonlinear seismic fragility assessment of tall buildings equipped with tuned mass damper (TMD) and considering soil-structure interaction effects

Tuned mass dampers (TMDs) are widely implemented in many types of structures, such as tall buildings, wind turbines, towers, and bridges, to enhance the structural performance subjected to seismic and wind loading. In the present study, we aim to comprehensively investigate the effectiveness of TMD, by performing seismic vulnerability assessment of a 20-story steel building equipped with TMD and considering the soil-structure interaction (SSI) effects. A suite of high-fidelity three-dimensional nonlinear finite element simulations—in which nonlinear constitutive models are adopted for both structural components and soil, and Domain Reduction Method (DRM) and Perfectly Matched Layer (PML) are utilized to inject the seismic ground motions and represent the semi-infinite contents of the soil media, respectively—are conducted to obtain the structural responses. Finally, the performance of TMD is examined by comparing the fragility curves obtained under different conditions, i.e., with and without TMD, with and without SSI. It is observed that the TMD can notably decrease the structural demands, while the SSI effects can increase the fragility of structures, especially under strong earthquakes.