A TLD (tuned liquid damper) is a passive control devise on top of a structure that dissipates the input excitation energy through the liquid boundary layer friction, the free surface contamination, and wave breaking. In order to design an efficient TLD, using an appropriate model to illustrate the liquid behaviour as well as knowing optimum TLD parameters is of crucial importance. In this study the accuracy of the existing models which are able to capture the liquid motion behaviour are investigated and the effective range of important TLD parameters are introduced through real-time hybrid shaking table tests.

A TLD (tuned liquid damper) is a passive control devise on top of a structure that dissipates the input excitation energy through the liquid boundary layer friction, the free surface contamination, and wave breaking. In order to design an efficient TLD, using an appropriate model to illustrate the liquid behaviour as well as knowing optimum TLD parameters is of crucial importance. In this study the accuracy of the existing models which are able to capture the liquid motion behaviour are investigated and the effective range of important TLD parameters are introduced through real-time hybrid shaking table tests.

Liquid sloshing in a 2D tank applied on a wave energy capture system and reducing the oscillation of an offshore platform are discussed in this study. A fully nonlinear time-independent finite difference method and the forth-order Runge-Kutta method are implemented to solve the coupled motions of liquid sloshing in a 2D tank with a floating platform. When the external forcing frequency of the Dynamic Vibration Absorber System composed by a tuned liquid damper and a tuned mass damper is identical to the fundamental frequency of the tank, the external force can be effectively diminished by the sloshing-induced force. In the meantime, the maximum effect of tuned mass damper on reducing the amplitude of the floating platform appears. When the frequency of external forcing is close to the first natural frequency of the liquid tank, the coupled effect between the motions of both the tank and the platform can effectively reduce the vibration of the platform and the total energy of the whole system. The Eigenfrequency of a wave capture system is formed by the coupled effect of a liquid tank and a wave capture system. When the excitation frequency of the wave capture system is near its Eigenfrequency, the sloshing-induced force is much larger than that of external and the maximum displacement of the wave energy capture system occurs. As a result, the wave energy capacity of the wave capture system can be averagely increased to 150% by the influence of liquid sloshing in the tank.

Liquid sloshing with unrestrained free surface in a moving container is associated with various engineering problems, such as tankers on highways, liquid oscillations in large storage tanks caused by earthquakes, sloshing of liquid cargo in ocean-going vessels, and the motion of liquid fuel in aircraft and spacecraft. The purpose of this study is to develop a three-dimensional (3D) numerical wave tank with or without internal structures to investigate the mechanism of liquid sloshing and the interaction between the fluid and internal structures. The developed 3D time-independent finite difference method is applied on solving liquid sloshing in tanks with or without the influence of baffles under the ground motion of six-degrees of freedom. The 3D Navier-Stokes equations were solved and transformed to a tank-fixed coordinate system, and the fully nonlinear kinematic and dynamic free surface boundary conditions for fluid sloshing in a rectangular tank with a square base were considered. The fluid is assumed incompressible in this study. The complicated interaction in the vicinity of the fluid-structure interface was solved by implementing one dimensional ghost cell approach and the stretching grid technique near the fluid-structure boundaries were used to catch the detailed evolution of local flow field. A PC-cluster was established by linking several single computers to reduce the computational times due to the implementation of the 3D numerical model. The Message Passing Interface (MPI) parallel language and MPICH2 software were utilized to code the computer codes and to carry out the circumstance of parallel computation, respectively. The developed numerical scheme was verified by rigorous benchmark tests. Not only the reported analytical, numerical and experimental studies were compared with the present numerical results, the experimental investigation was also involved in the present work to further validate the accuracy of the numerical scheme. All the benchmark tests of this study showed excellent accuracy of the developed numerical scheme. For a tank without internal structures, the coupled motions of surge and sway are simulated with various excitation angles, excitation frequencies and water depths. The characteristics of sloshing waves are dissected in terms of the classification of sloshing wave types, sloshing amplitude, beating phenomenon, sloshing-induced forces and energy transfer of sloshing waves. Six types of sloshing waves, named single-directional, diagonal, square-like, swirling-like, swirling and irregular waves, were found and classified in the present study and the occurrence of these waves are tightly in connection with the excitation frequency of the tank. The effect of excitation angle on the characteristics of sloshing waves is explored and discussed, especially for swirling waves. The spectral analyses of sloshing displacement of various sloshing waves are examined and a clear evidence of the correlation between sloshing wave patterns and resonant modes of sloshing waves are demonstrated. The mechanism of switching direction of swirling waves is discussed by investigating the situation of circulatory flow, the instantaneous free surface, the gravitational effect and the instantaneous direction of external forcing. The coupling effects of heave, surge and sway motions were also included in this study and the result showed an unstable influence of heave motion on the kinematic and dynamic characteristics of sloshing waves when the vertical excitation frequency of the tank is twice as large as the fundamental natural frequency. Except irregular waves, the other types of sloshing waves are converted into swirling waves due to the effect of heave motion. The study related to tuned liquid damper (TLD) in 2D and 3D tanks were considered. A comprehensive investigation for a 2D tank with vertically tank bottom-mounted baffles (baffled tank) are demonstrated and discussed with respect to the influence of baffle height on the natural mode of the tank, the evolution of vortices and vortex shedding phenomenon, the relationship between the vortex shedding frequency and the excitation frequency of the tank, the vortex size generated in the vicinity of the baffle tip, the interaction of vortices inside the tank. The baffle height shows a significant influence on the shift of the first natural frequency of the baffled tank and the liquid depth also plays an important part in determining this influence. In other words, the shift of the first natural mode due to various baffle height is varied with water depths. The design of two baffles separated by 0.2 times the tank breadth is an efficient tool to not only reduce the sloshing amplitude but switch the first natural frequency of the tank. The sloshing displacement is affected distinctly by different numbers of baffles mounted vertically on the tank bottom. The more baffles mounted onto the tank bottom, the smaller the sloshing displacement is presented in both the transient and steady-state periods. The processes of the evolution of vortices near the baffle tip are categorized into four phases: the formation of separated shear layer and generation of vortices, the formation of a vertical jet and shedding of vortices, the interaction between shedding vortices and sloshing flow (the generation of snaky flow) and the interaction between snaky flow and sloshing waves. Vortex shedding phenomenon due to stronger vertical jets occurs when the excitation frequency is close to the first natural mode of the baffled tank. The size of the vortex generated near the baffle tip is discussed and the vortex size is closely correlated with the baffle height. Two types of 3D tuned liquid dampers, a vertically tank bottom-mounted baffle and a vertical plate, are discussed for a tank under coupled surge-sway motions. The wave types of diagonal and single-directional waves switch to the swirling type due to the influence of the baffle. The phenomenon of square-like waves or irregular waves coexisting with swirling waves is found in the baffled tank under diagonal excitation. The baffle and the vertical plate mounted parallel to the east (west) wall of the tank can effectively reduce the sloshing amplitude when the excitation angle is between 0 degree and 10 degree and the corresponding sloshing displacement in the sway (z) direction becomes more dominant with the increase of the excitation angle. The shift of the first natural mode of the baffled tank due to various baffle heights in the x direction is dominated in this design of baffled tank. The length of the plate can cause a significant influence on not only the variation of the natural frequencies but the type of the sloshing waves. The influence of the vertical plate on the irregular waves is insignificant and several peaks appear in the spectral analysis of the sloshing displacement for the irregular waves and the numbers of peaks are more than that of the baffled tank.

In recent years, an increase to design slender and aesthetically-pleasing structures have resulted in some structures having a low natural frequency. This is because the design calculation did not meet the requirement of serviceability performance. Structures can experience excessive vibrations when they are subjected to different types of dynamic loading. A device can be installed to prevent these vibrations.In this thesis, we study the response of buildings and lateral vibrations of footbridges equipped with Tuned Liquid Damper. The aim is to mitigate the first mode of vibration. Tuned Liquid Damper consists of a container in rectangular, cylindrical or arbitrary shape partially filled with shallow liquid, most often water is used as a regulating device system. The design properties of Tuned Liquid Damper is introduced and it is based on the analogyof the most popular damper, Tuned Mass Damper.An experimental study of a building frame model with four floors is conducted to validate the numerical results obtained from the simulation of the model in ANSYS. The linear and non-linear analysis are performed through a system coupling between Ansys mechanical and Fluent solver. The simulation results obtained are in good agreement with the experimental results.A parametric study is conducted with a simply supported steel footbridge. It is a 45 m long span with 3 m width and the flexural rigidity is modified to get the lateral vibration mode. The first lateral natural frequency obtained is 0.713 Hz. The load case for the study considered is according to Sétra guide. The variable parameters studied is the Tuned Liquid Damper water mass ratios: 0.7%, 1.0%, 2.0%, 3.0% and 4.0%. The results show a satisfactory performance of the footbridge model equipped with Tuned Liquid Damper. The accelerations are below 0.1 m/s2 which satisfied the requirement of 0.15 m/s2.

<p> A numerical algorithm has been developed to solve the sloshing motion of liquid in a Tuned Liquid Damper (TLD) outfitted by slat screens under large and random amplitude of excitation. It is based on the finite-difference method. The free surface has been reconstructed using volume of fluid method. Donor-acceptor technique has been used for tracking the volume fraction field. The effect of slat screen has been included and modeled using the partial cell treatment method. </p> <p> The algorithm is an integrated fluid-structure model where the response of the structure is determined considering the effects of TLD. The structure is assumed as a single degree of freedom system (SDOF) and its response is calculated using the Duhamel integral method. </p> <p> The algorithm has been validated against experimental data for the cases with and without screens. An excellent agreement was obtained between numerical and experimental results. </p> <p> An extensive parametric study has been carried out investigating the effect of slat screens and screen pattern on the TLD performance and on the structure response. A new parameter termed as slat ratio was introduced to characterize the slat screens based on their pattern. Results indicated that screen pattern has a significant effect on the TLD performance and it could lead up to 33 % reduction in structure response. It was found that decreasing the slat ratio will increase the damping effect of a TLD outfitted by slat screen. </p> <p> The validity of the most commonly used approach, Baines and Peterson model, to calculate pressure drop of slat screens has been investigated. A conelation factor as a function of Reynolds number and solidity ratio of screen has been proposed to improve the results of this model. A new concept termed as effective solidity ratio has been proposed to account for the physical significant of screen pattern on TLD performance. </p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p> Tuned Liquid Dampers (TLDs) are increasingly being used to suppress the dynamic vibration of tall buildings. An equivalent mechanical model is essential for rapid analysis and design of a TLD. The most common TLD tank geometries are circular, annular and rectangular. Rectangular tanks are utilized for 1-D and 2-D TLDs, whereas circular and annular are usually applied to axisymmetric structures. The amount of fluid that participates in the sloshing motion is directly influenced by the tank geometry. Although not commonly used, a TLD having a curved-bottom tank is expected to perform more effectively due to its relatively large value of effective mass. The main objective of this study is to develop mechanical models for seven TLDs with different tank geometries including the curved-bottom case, and to theoretically investigate the performance of rectangular, vertical-cylindrical and horizontal-cylindrical TLDs.</p> <p> Potential flow theory, linear long wave theory, Lagrange's equations and virtual work method are employed to develop the equivalent mechanical model parameters of TLDs with rectangular, vertical-cylindrical, horizontal-cylindrical, hyperboloid, triangular, sloped-bottom, and parabolic tank geometries. A rectangular, vertical-cylindrical and horizontal-cylindrical TLD are selected for further study using a single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) model and a two degree of freedom structure-TLD system model applying the derived equivalent mechanical parameters.</p> <p> The dynamic characteristics of the TLDs as a SDOF system are investigated. The mechanical model is verified by comparing calculated values with experimental results for a rectangular TLD. The free surface motion, sloshing force and energy dissipation are found to be dependent upon the excitation amplitude. Analytical results also indicate that the horizontal-cylindrical TLD possesses the greatest normalized sloshing force and energy dissipation among the TLDs considered.</p> <p> The performances of various TLDs installed in a structure are studied in terms of effective damping, efficiency and robustness. Tuning ratio, structural response amplitude, mass ratio and liquid depth are adjusted to investigate their affect on the performance of the studied TLDs. Performance charts are developed and subsequently used to present the results. It is found that small liquid depth ratio and large mass ratio can lead to a robust structure-TLD system with small relative motion ratio between the structure and the vibration absorber. Comparisons of performance between the three TLDs are made and it can be concluded that the horizontal-cylindrical TLD is the most robust and effective device with the smallest relative motion ratio.</p> / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)