Development of a novel tuned liquid damper with floating base for converting deep tanks into effective vibration control devices

Abstract

Despite the proven effectiveness of tuned liquid dampers (TLDs), readily available liquid storage tanks are rarely utilized for vibration control of laterally-excited structures, as these are deep tanks with low inherent damping. Further, the fluctuation in liquid level in these tanks also causes variation in the fundamental sloshing frequency, leading to detuning. To overcome these problems, a novel TLD with floating base (TLD-FB) is proposed, in which a constant and shallow liquid level is maintained between the free liquid surface and the floating base. The liquid above the floating base acts as a conventional shallow TLD that always remains tuned to the structural frequency. The paper demonstrates how the TLD-FB can be incorporated into a water storage tank system on an example building without disturbing its functionality and achieves structural response reduction, despite water level fluctuations in the tanks.