A numerical study of tuned liquid damper based on incompressible SPH method combined with TMD analogy

Abstract

Tuned liquid dampers (TLDs) are economical dynamic vibration absorbers which are increasingly being used for structural response control. Nevertheless, a thorough understanding of the sloshing behavior inside the TLD is essential for efficient design. In this paper, a truly incompressible smoothed particle hydrodynamics (ISPH) method is employed to circumvent the difficulties regarding the simulation of fully nonlinear sloshing motion induced by large amplitude excitations. The behavior of the TLD with damping screens is studied numerically over a wide range of excitation frequencies and amplitudes. It is found through comparison with the existing experimental data that the ISPH model is a powerful tool for accurate predictions of the TLD behavior. The amplitude-dependent properties of an equivalent tuned mass damper (TMD) model, which is capable of reproducing the energy dissipation characteristics of the TLD, are derived from the simulations results. Good agreement between the numerical and experimental results is indicative of the equivalent model’s ability to predict the response of structure–TLD systems, suggesting that the ISPH model can properly simulate the TLD behavior. The effect of screen placement on the performance of structure–TLD systems is also investigated. Findings reveal that improved performance of TLD can be realized under high amplitude excitations by placing the damping screens in the locations corresponding to the higher sloshing modes.