Tuned liquid dampers (TLDs) are increasingly being used as dynamic vibrationabsorbers to minimize the vibration of structures. A tuned liquid damper is a tank filledwith a liquid. When attached to a structure, the liquid sloshing action inside the TLDdampens and absorbs part of the energy given to the structure. The difficulty in designingTLDs arises from its nonlinear response (behavior), which requires a detailedunderstanding of the sloshing motion inside the TLD. An in-house numerical algorithmhas been developed to investigate and understand liquid sloshing motion inside TLDs andto evaluate the TLD damping performance when coupled with a vibrating Single Degreeof Freedom (SDOF) structure. The model is based on the finite-difference method.
TheVolume of Fluid method has been used to reconstruct the liquid free surface. TheContinuum Surface Force model has been used to model and resolve the discontinuityaccompanied with wave breaking that might take place at the liquid surface. All dynamicstresses on the free surface have been taken into consideration to evaluate wave breaking.No linearization assumptions have been used in solving the Navier-Stokes equations. Thedeveloped numerical model incorporates the interaction between the structure dynamicsand the TLD. In this study, the structure has been assumed as a SDOF system and itsdynamic response has been calculated using the Duhamel integral method.
The model has been validated against experimental data with and without thestructure. Good agreement was obtained between the numerical and the experimentalresults.
