Motion Based Design
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this graduate civil engineering course on designing structures to control motion under dynamic loads. It covers analytical and numerical methods for finding optimal stiffness distributions, the role of damping in limiting movement, and specific control technologies including tuned mass dampers, base isolation systems, and active structural control. Worked examples apply the motion-based design paradigm to building structures subjected to seismic excitation, connecting theory to real earthquake engineering problems. Materials follow MIT's OpenCourseWare format, drawing on lecture notes and problem sets typical of the department's structural engineering sequence, with no enrollment or fee required. The course suits students or practitioners who already have a background in structural analysis and want a rigorous look at how buildings are engineered to withstand and dampen dynamic forces.