Vibration Control of Structures by an Upgraded Tuned Liquid Column Damper

To improve the effectiveness and the robustness of a tuned liquid column damper (TLCD) in mitigating structural vibrations, an upgraded type of tuned liquid column damper (UTLCD) is proposed in this paper. A UTLCD is composed of a single TLCD fixed on an undamped tuned mass damper (TMD). The effect of parameters of UTLCD on its performance was investigated through a numerical example. It was found that the mass ratio between TMD and TLCD in a UTLCD has a significant influence on the effectiveness of UTLCD. In addition, the performance and the robustness of a UTLCD with optimal parameters were compared with those of the optimum TLCD, which has the same weight as the UTLCD. This study confirms that an optimized UTLCD is more effective than a TLCD. Meanwhile, the robustness of the most effective UTLCD is also better, but not by much, than that of an optimized TLCD. However, a UTLCD can be much more robust than an optimal single TLCD if they are considered on the same level of efficiency.