Tuned liquid damper for response control of a wooden mast structure

Newly developed high strength, lightweight materials unlocked the possibility of designing taller, flexible structural systems. Such structures, when exposed to lateral loads are often susceptible to significant deformations. By lowering the structural vibration response of such structures, passive damping mechanism in the form of tuned liquid dampers (TLD) have been already investigated and found to be effective. Within this framework, the current study aims to investigate the effect of a TLD on a mast structure, exposed to natural wind loading. Vibration-based, triaxial sensors with a low noise-floor are utilized to acquire high quality structural response. A significant set of recorded measurements is analyzed by exploiting the robust Operational Modal Analysis (OMA) theoretical background. As a result, changes in the natural frequencies and modal peaks of the structural system upon the addition of the TLD are identified and a quite interesting relationship emerges between the efficiency of the TLD and the wind speed