Empirical Evaluation of Variation of Orifice Blocking Ratio in a Tuned Liquid Column Damper using Frequency Response Function Measurement

Abstract

Tuned liquid column damper (TLCD) is a simple technique used to increase the structure resistance to the external load. This type of damper can effectively decrease the structure response when the TLCD parameters such as the natural frequency and damping factor are well selected. Even though several TLCD models have been proposed and many algorithms to optimize the TLCD parameters have been developed. However, it is very little research has been conducted to evaluate the TLCD damping factor experimentally. A simple empirical method for adjusting the TLCD damping factor is by varying the orifice-blocking ratio. In this research, 5 types of blocking ratio were trialled in the TLCD. They were without orifice and with 2, 4, 6 and 8 18 mm diameter orifices. The TLCD is positioned on the second floor of a Two-DOF shear structure. A frequency response function showing the ratio between the response magnitude and the excitation force on the structure in the frequency domain was recorded for each trial. The results show that the TLCDs with orifices damped vibrations more effectively than the one without orifice. The larger the blocking ratio, the larger the TLCD damping factor. Two 18 mm orifices were insufficient to damp the vibration as the blocking ratio is too large and TLCD is less responsive to the vibrations. The optimum condition of a U-Shaped TLCD blocking ratio was found to be 70.77% which corresponded to 4 holes of 18 mm orifice diameter. This type of TLCD dampened up to 80.04% of the vibration magnitude.

Vibration Response Suppression of Space Structure using Two U-Shaped Water Container

“…The DVA damping ratios ζ A1 and ζ A2 in equation 6are influenced by the characteristic of the orifice inside the water tank column [15]. The vibration parameters of the water inside the storage tank can be calculated as follows [16]:…”