Tuned inerter viscoelastic liquid column dampers

Abstract

Structural vibration control remains a major challenge in engineering, particularly for buildings exposed to dynamic excitations. While conventional Tuned Liquid Column Dampers (TLCDs) and inerter-based TLCDs offer passive damping solutions, they are limited in simultaneously optimising inertial and damping effects. This study proposes Tuned Inerter Viscoelastic Liquid Column Dampers (TIVLCDs), a novel class of passive dampers combining inerters with viscoelastic materials to enhance energy dissipation. Closed-form expressions for optimal design parameters are derived using statistical linearisation and $H_{\infty }$ optimisation. Frequency domain analyses show that the V-shaped TIVLCD achieves peak displacement reductions of 96.93% and 96.43%, and acceleration reductions of 78.40% and 81.82%, compared to TLCD and TLCDI, respectively. Time history analyses under real earthquake ground motions reveal displacement reductions of 27.35% and 29.36%, and acceleration reductions of 22.99% and 27.17%, for U-shaped and V-shaped TIVLCDs relative to TLCDI. These improvements are attributed to the enhanced coupling between inertial, viscoelastic, and gravitational effects. The findings demonstrate that TIVLCDs, particularly the V-shaped design, provide significantly better vibration and acceleration mitigation than existing solutions, establishing them as an effective and adaptable tool for passive structural control under seismic loading.