Experimental Characterization And Model Of A Modular Square-Section TLCD Device

Designing new tall buildings or long span bridges means dealing with problems like comfort and safety evaluation due to wind or earthquake excitation. These studies often leads to different technical solutions able to increase structural damping by means of both active or passive devices; one of these solutions is a passive Tuned Liquid Column Damper (TLCD), reducing the dynamical response of a structure due to external excitation. To correctly design these kind of devices it is not only necessary to tune the TLCD on the first natural frequency/ies of the building, but a numerical tool should be used in order to accurate model loads and system-device interaction and optimize TLCD parameters. The damping effect of a TLCD device is mainly a function of tank shape, volume of water filled in and the loss of load due to the orifice in its horizontal base duct. Because model parameters have non-linear dependence on the TLCD characteristics, they have to be often experimentally estimated. The present work describes the development of a modular square-section TLCD which can be applied on civil structures. The results of the experiments carried out on two prototypes of this particular solution allow to easily determinate all the parameters of the numerical TLCD model, leading to a numerical parametrical design. In particular, all the experimental estimated parameters are reported focusing their influence on TLCD dynamics and model. Besides, in order to show benefits and limits of the proposed model, a complete series of tests has been carried out in order to verify experimental-numerical comparison in real TLCD working conditions, like random imposed motion.