Vibration control in high-rise buildings with tuned liquid dampers - Numerical simulation and engineering applications

Tuned liquid dampers (TLDs) are increasingly being used as efficient dynamic vibration absorbers to mitigate windinduced vibration in super high-rise buildings. However, the damping characteristics of screens and the control effectiveness of actual structures must be investigated to improve the reliability of TLDs in engineering applications. In this study, a numerical TLD model is developed using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and a simulation method for achieving the coupled vibration of the structure and TLD is proposed. The numerical results are verified using shaking table tests, and the effects of the solidity ratio and screen position on the TLD damping ratios are investigated. The TLD control effectiveness is obtained by simulating the wind-induced vibration response of a full-scale structure-TLD system to determine the optimal screen solidity ratio. The effects of the structural frequency, damping ratio, and wind load amplitude on the TLD performance are further analyzed. The TLD damping ratio increases nonlinearly with the solidity ratio, and it increases with the screens towards the tank center and then decreases slightly owing to the hydrodynamic interaction between screens. Full-scale coupled simulations demonstrated that the optimal TLD control effectiveness was achieved when the solidity ratio was 0.46. In addition, structural frequency shifts can significantly weaken the TLD performance. The control effectiveness decreases with an increase in the structural damping ratio, and is insensitive to the wind load amplitude within a certain range, implying that the TLD has a stable damping performance over a range of wind speed variations.