Characterization of Liquid Oscillation and Sloshing Properties of Toroidal TLCDs for Multidirectional Vibration Control

Abstract

The toroidal tuned liquid column damper (TTLCD) has been known so far only for its multidirectional vibration control capabilities. The details of its liquid motion characteristics and energy dissipation capacity have been missing. To cover this gap, in this paper, experimental studies are carried out by shaking table tests and an effective three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics model of the TTLCD is developed. All parametric effects and the characteristics of the liquid motion in the TTLCD are addressed. The findings of the paper now clearly reveal that the TTLCD encompasses both an oscillatory liquid deflection as the first mode and a sloshing motion as the second mode vibration response. Accordingly, the results prove that the TTLCD operates not only multidirectionally but also as a unique multimodal device, which unites the properties of tuned liquid dampers (TLDs)/tuned sloshing dampers (TSDs) with tuned liquid column dampers (TLCDs).