Structure-fluid interaction model of tuned liquid dampers

A Lagrangian displacement-based fluid element has been developed to model l arge amplitude free surface motion of nearly incompressible viscous fluids in a tank of rectangular cross-section under dynamic excitation for tuned l iquid damper applications. The penalty method is employed to enforce the ne arly incompressible characteristic of fluids considering the non-linear eff ect of finite distortion of zero-shear and low-viscous fluid elements. The effectiveness of the proposed model was verified by experimental results fr om the literature. The results show that the proposed non-linear fluid elem ent can predict non-linear behaviours of large amplitude sloshing due to dy namic excitation, especially at near-resonant region. The proposed fluid el ement can be conveniently incorporated into any existing general-purpose fi nite element program to serve as an effective tool for the analysis and des ign of tuned liquid dampers. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.