Three dimensional analysis of a high-rise building equipped with multiple tuned liquid dampers using wind tunnel loads

A dynamic vibration absorber (DVA) can be used to reduce excessive resonant vibrations to acceptable levels by adding effective damping to a structure. A tuned liquid damper (TLD) is a special type of passive DVA that consists of a rigid tank, which is partially filled with a liquid. The TLD is attached to the building at selected locations. The resulting inertia forces, which develop from the sloshing liquid motion inside the tank, modify the dynamic response of the building. These forces are approximately anti-phase to the excitation forces acting on the structure, resulting in a reduction in resonant motions. Adding TLDs to suppress a particular mode of vibration, for example a sway mode, could result in increased excitation of other modes of vibration, such as a torsional mode. Accordingly, torsional response motions may result not only from the geometry of the structure itself and wind loading on the building at certain angles, but may also be amplified by the addition of TLDs. As a result, it may be prudent to conduct a full three dimensional (3D) dynamic analysis of the building equipped with tuned liquid dampers, which captures the interaction of different modes of the building and the nonlinear behaviour of the TLD(s). An existing Structure-TLD system model, developed and validated previously by the authors, is expanded to analyze a 3D-Structure-multiple TLD system. This model is employed to estimate the response of a full-scale high-rise building equipped with TLDs subjected to wind loading.