Vibration Mitigation of Structures through TLCD with Embedded Baffles

In order to have an efficient Tuned Liquid Column Damper (TLCD) to mitigate vibrational energy of structures its damping level should be properly adjusted. This study proposes a new method of damping control of the TLCD by installing one-directional baffles. Compared to other existing methods, the proposed technique is simpler in design, easier in installation and maintenance, more practical to be used in real scale TLCDs, and has high potential to be used as an active control damping system. In this study, the dynamic characteristics of modified TLCD with different types of baffles were obtained by investigating their effect on the characteristics of Structure-TLCD system (S-TLCD), and structural responses of the S-TLCD under harmonic excitation. The effects of baffles were checked in three places with five different blockage ratios. TLCD equipped with baffles located horizontally at the external side of columns’ entrance, which is called Horizontal Side Baffle (HSB) with 60 % blockage ratio (T + HSB60) showed the best performance among different types of studied baffles; it increased the damping of the structure from 1.2 to 8 % and reduced the maximum acceleration response by 77 %. However, the TLCD without baffles increased the damping to 1.8 % and reduced the maximum acceleration response by 59 %. Installation of HSB60 increased the head loss coefficient of conventional TLCD 4.8 times, while it had an insignificant effect on natural frequency.