Validated design of a low-cost passive inerter system for multi-hazard structural resilience in tropical infrastructure

The crucial requirement of affordable and high-performance vibration control systems has been underlined by the growing vulnerability of building structures in tropical and sub-Saharan areas to both wind and seismic excitations. Although passive inerter-based solutions have shown potential in improving structural resilience, current models mostly target high-rise or resource-rich environments, providing little flexibility to low-rise, economically constrained tropical infrastructures. Moreover, present work lacks experimental studies verifying these devices under multi-hazard situations, especially in nonlinear, low-frequency dynamic regimes typical of modern African construction typologies. This work presents the design, modeling, and real-time experimental validation of a new low-cost passive inerter-based vibration control system, optimized for deployment in single- and multi-degree-of-freedom (SDOF and MDOF) structures subject to both seismic and wind-induced vibrations. On benchmark structural models subjected separately to El Centro earthquake records and synthetic turbulent wind loads, frequency-response studies and time-domain simulations were performed. On a shaking table, the experimental setup consisted of a scaled two-story shear frame subjected to harmonic base excitations tuned to be representative of the predominant seismic and along-wind response frequencies; the two hazard types were therefore investigated sequentially rather than concurrently. Results show that, compared to an unmanaged frame, the suggested system achieves up to 42.8% reduction in peak displacement, 35.3% decrease in inter-story drift, and 31.6% attenuation in base shear; it also beats conventional TMDs by over 18.5% in average energy dissipation. Ideally suited for deployment in off-grid or economically challenged surroundings, the device maintains structural stability across both hazard types without the need of active control or external power. This work fills a significant research and application gap in sustainable, context-sensitive structural engineering by contributing a verified, economically feasible passive control technique with verifiable performance under dual-hazard (seismic and wind) scenarios, where each hazard was tested sequentially but designed within a unified multi-hazard resilience framework. It also opens the path for the scalable integration of inerter-based technologies into transforming architectural designs all throughout the Global South.