Numerical Investigation of the Optimal Inclination Angle of Sloped Bottom Tuned Liquid Damper

Ahmad Alkhatib

Abstract: One of the most common designing issues that faces structural engineers during design phase is to ensure that the capacity of the studied structure is well enough to withstand seismic events and mitigate as mush as possible to reduce the effects of dynamic loads. This research studies the seismic behavior of sloped-bottom tuned liquid dampers (SB-TLD), these dampers will be used as motion control devices to mitigate the response building under earthquakes, an analytical model of sloped bottom TLD was built using ABAQUSTM to obtain the optimum Incline angle of the sloped bottom which leads to optimum behavior of TLD, further a comparison was carried out between rectangular shaped TLD and trapezoidal shaped TLD (SBTLD). It was found that the SBTLD is more efficient and dissipates more energy than rectangular TLD.

Keywords: Vibration mitigation, tuned liquid dampers, TLDs, sloped bottom tuned liquid dampers, SB-TLD, dynamics of liquid in containers