Tuned Liquid Particle Damper for Optimising the Vibration Behaviour of Slender Structures

Abstract

For structures with horizontal vibration amplitude, pendulum dampers are usually the preferred solution. However, these dampers have the disadvantage that the entire system with pendulum and damper is a technically complex and expensive construction. One alternative is the Tuned Liquid Sloshing Damper (TLSD). The advantage of the lower technical effort is offset by the disadvantages of non-adjustable damping and wave breaking at large deflections. To increase the effectiveness, it is necessary to further develop the TLSD so that the degree of damping can be precisely adjusted and the non-linear behaviour can be avoided. This can be optimised as follows: Floating particles on the liquid surface ensure that energy is extracted from the system and the sloshing movements of the liquid through internal friction and wall friction subside more quickly. The quantity of particles and other parameters can be used to adjust the level of damping. The surface of the fluid-particle filling can be forced to move almost linearly with an additional lightweight rigid plate placed above the particles. This study investigates the development and metrological investigation of the adjustable damping ratio and sloshing frequency of the Tuned Liquid Particle Damper (TLPD), and the testing of the optimised damper on a 10 m high test tower using sweep and free vibration tests.