Experimental and numerical studies on tuned liquid damper

Current trends in the construction industry demands taller and lighter structures, which are also more flexible and having quite a low damping value. This increases failure possibilities and also, problems from the serviceability point of view. Several techniques are available today to minimize the vibration of the structure, out of which concept of using of TLD is a newer one. The tuned liquid damper (TLD) is a liquid filled tank which uses liquid sloshing action to dampen the oscillations of a structure. They are cost effective and low maintenance dynamic vibration absorbers that are being used in flexible and lightly damped structures. A numerical algorithm was developed to investigate the response of the frame model, fitted with a TLD. A nonlinear TLD model was considered. A total of five loading conditions was applied at the base of the structure. First one was a sinusoidal loading corresponding to the resonance condition with the fundamental frequency of the structure, second one was corresponding to compatible time history as per spectra of IS-1893 (Part -1): 2002 for 5% damping at rocky soil and rest three were corresponding to time histories of past earthquake such as El Centro Earthquake record , Sanfranscisco Earthquake and Colianga Earthquake. A series of experimental tests are conducted on a SDOF structure-tuned liquid damper systems to evaluate their performance under harmonic excitation.The effect of the different parameters such as frequency ratio, depth ratio and mass ratio on the behavior has been studied. The effectiveness of the TLD was calculated in terms of percentage of reduction of amplitude of displacements of the structure