Reducing Acceleration Response of a SDOF Structure with a Bi-Directional Liquid Damper

Abstract

This study deals with the design of a bi-directional liquid damper for a SDOF structure. Two dampers are usually needed to reduce wind-induced responses of tall structures since they are along and across wind ones. The proposed damper has the advantage of controlling both responses with a single damper. The damper shows dynamic behavior of both tuned liquid column damper (TLCD) and tuned sloshing damper (TSD) in the direction of two axes perpendicular with each other. This paper presents experimental verification to confirm its control performance. First, shaking table test is carried out to investigate reducing responses of a SDOF structure by the damper. Control performance of the damper is expressed by the transfer function from shaking table accelerations to SDOF structure ones. Testing results show that the damper reduced bi-directional responses of a SDOF structure. Also, it reduced torsion responses. It was confirmed from system identification results that damping ratio of a SDOF structure increased by the bi-directional liquid damper.