Seismic Response Mitigation of Building via Inerter-Based Tuned Liquid Damper

This work investigates the use of inerter-based tuned liquid dampers (ITLD) to mitigate building vibrations under seismic excitation. ITLD is derived from tuned liquid dampers (TLD) by installing a mechanical network based on inerter. The building is modeled as a mass-chain system, and an equivalent linear model is applied to obtain the state-space model of the whole system. Subsequently, the performance indices are formulated to optimize both the top-floor displacement and top-floor acceleration of the building. Based on the optimization results, mechanical network layouts are obtained using the network synthesis method. The influence of weights on the H2 norm of the top-floor displacement and top-floor acceleration of the building is analyzed, and the RMS values of top-floor displacement and top-floor acceleration under eight different seismic excitations are provided. The results indicate that the optimal mechanical network can effectively mitigate building vibrations under almost every type of seismic excitation. Considering both the mechanical complexity and the vibration mitigation performance, the second-order mechanical network performs the best. Finally, through simulation verification and theoretical analysis, this paper finds that ITLD has the best effect of mitigating building vibration when it is installed on the top floor.