Terrace on the Park Floor Vibration

Eduardo Castro was project engineer for the design of a tuned mass damper to reduce the excessive floor vibrations at the Terrace on the Park building in Flushing Meadows Park. Terrace on the Park was designed by the Port Authority of NY and NJ as its exhibition space for the 1964 Worlds Fair. The building features elliptical promenade and roughly rectangular ballroom levels, both suspended six floors above the ground on four steel supercolumns. The floor beams cantilever over ring girders to the face of the building. After the World’s Fair when the building was used as dining and dance halls guests complained about the vibration of the floor. A Tuned Mass Damper was successfully designed and installed in the corners of the cantilevered floors significantly reducing the floor vibrations. The Tuned Mass Damper consisted of a concrete mass on large springs and a commercial dashpot. The size of the mass was limited to the maximum allowed by the capacity of the existing framing.