Human cases of gastric anisakiasis caused by the zoonotic parasite Anisakis pegreffii are increasing in Italy. The disease is caused by ingestion of larval nematodes in lightly cooked or raw seafood. Because symptoms are vague and serodiagnosis is difficult, the disease is often misdiagnosed and cases are understimated.

Summary The paper concerns the optimal design and performance evaluation of a Tuned Mass Damper Inerter (TMDI) to reduce dynamic vibrations. The system exploits properties of the inerter, a two‐terminal mechanical device able to produce a force proportional to the relative acceleration between terminals, with the ability of generating an apparent mass even two orders of magnitude greater than its own physical mass. A primary single‐degree‐of‐freedom structure is equipped with a classical linear Tuned Mass Damper (TMD), the secondary structure, whose mass is connected to the ground via an inerter. The optimal design of the TMDI is conducted by assuming a white noise process as base input and utilizing three different design methodologies: displacement minimization, acceleration minimization and maximization of the ratio between the energy dissipated in the secondary system and the total input energy. Optimal results obtained with the different methodologies are carried out and compared. Two limit cases are also considered when the inerter is not contemplated: conventional and non‐conventional TMDs, characterized by a low and a large mass ratio, respectively. The TMDI performance is evaluated and compared with conventional and non‐conventional TMDs; moreover, its robustness is assessed with a sensitivity analysis varying the design parameters. Attention is focused not exclusively on the primary structure response but also on the secondary one. Finally, the effectiveness of the optimally designed TMDI is evaluated having considered earthquake base excitation. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of TMDI systems for dynamic response reduction with superior performances and robustness than classical TMDs. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper investigates the dynamic behavior and the seismic effectiveness of a non-conventional Tuned Mass Damper (TMD) with large mass ratio. Compared with conventional TMD, the device mass is increased up to be comparable with the mass of the structure to be protected, aiming at a better control performance. In order to avoid the introduction of an excessive additional weight, masses already present on the structure are converted into tuned masses, retaining structural or architectural functions beyond the mere control function. A reduced order model is introduced for design purposes and the optimal design of a large mass ratio TMD for seismic applications is then formulated. The design method is specifically developed to implement High-Damping Rubber Bearings (HDRB) to connect the device mass to the main structure, taking advantage of combining stiffness and noticeable damping characteristics. Ground acceleration is modeled as a Gaussian random process with white noise power spectral density. A numerical searching technique is used to obtain the optimal design parameter, the frequency ratio alpha, which minimizes the root-mean-square displacement response of the main structure. The study finally comprises shaking table tests on a 1:5 scale model under a wide selection of accelerograms, both artificial and natural, to assess the seismic effectiveness of the proposed large mass ratio TMD. Copyright (C) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

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SummaryInter‐story isolation, an effective strategy for mitigating the seismic risk of both new and existing buildings, has gained more and more interest in recent years as alternative to base isolation, whenever the latter results to be impractical, technically difficult or uneconomic. As suggested by the name, the technique consists in inserting flexible isolators at floor levels other than the base along the height of a multi‐story building, thus realizing a non‐conventional Tuned Mass Damper (TMD). Consistent with this, an optimal design methodology is developed in the present paper with the objective of achieving the global protection of both the structural portions separated by the inter‐story isolation system, that is, the lower portion (below the isolation system) and the isolated upper portion (above the isolation system). The optimization procedure is formulated on the basis of an energy performance criterion that consists in maximizing the ratio between the energy dissipated in the isolation system and the input energy globally transferred to the entire structure. Numerical simulations, performed under natural accelerograms with different frequency content and considering increasing isolation levels along the height of a reference frame structure, are used to investigate the seismic performance of the optimized inter‐story isolation systems. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In this paper, the concept of an ideal grounded linear inerter, endowing supplemental inertia to passive linear tuned mass-dampers (TMDs) through its inertance property without increasing the TMD mass, is considered to reduce lateral displacement demands in base isolated structural systems (BISs). Optimal tuned mass-damper-inerter (TMDI) design parameters are numerically determined to maximize energy dissipation by the TMDI under stationary white noise support excitation. Performance of these optimally designed TMDI-equipped BISs is assessed for stationary white and colored noise excitations as well as for four recorded earthquake acceleration ground motions (GMs) with different non-stationary frequency content. It is found that for fixed mass ratio the inclusion of the grounded inerter reduces significantly secondary mass displacement and stroke for all considered excitations while it improves appreciably BIS displacement demands except for the particular case of a near-fault accelerogram characterized by early arrival of a high-energy low-frequency pulse as captured in its wavelet spectrogram. More importantly, it leads further to reductions to BIS acceleration demands with the exception of colored noise excitation for which an insignificant increase is noted. The positive effects of the inerter saturate with increasing inertance and BIS damping ratio demonstrating that small inertance values are more effective in vibration suppression of BISs with low inherent damping. Overall, it is recommended to combine low damping isolation layers with large inertance and low secondary mass TMDIs.

In this study a new solution for the identification of physical parameters of mechanical systems from identified state space formulations is presented. With the proposed approach, the restriction of having a full set of sensors or a full set of actuators for a complete identification is relaxed, and it is shown that a solution can be achieved by utilizing mixed types of information. The methodology is validated through numerical examples, and conceptual comparisons of the proposed methodology with previously presented approaches are also discussed.

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