Abstract: With the trend towards more lighter and slender footbridges, the vibration serviceability is more critical in design. The tuned mass damper (TMD) has shown a high efficiency in reducing the excessive vibrations under dynamic loads induced by pedestrians. Based on the distributed parameter method, a general measure to calculate the dynamic response of a footbridge-STMD system or a footbridge-MTMD system is suggested. The efficacy of TMD in controlling footbridge vibration under walking loads is examined according to the root-mean-square acceleration, and the optimal placement and parameters of a TMD system are discussed. The proposed method is also verified by numerical examples.