Hybrid simulation of a tall building with a double-decker tuned sloshing damper system under wind loads

This study presents an advanced experimental system, hardware-in-the-loop (HIL), recently referred to as hybrid testing, to validate the effectiveness of a double-decker tuned sloshing damper (TSD) system with screens applied to a recently constructed tall building. The HIL simulation facilitates a performance analysis of a combined structure-damper system in which the nonlinear behavior of liquid motion in a TSD is physically modeled, whereas a building system under wind loads that behaves linearly is embedded virtually utilizing a computer model. The scaled model of the TSD is composed of a computer-controlled system with a shaking table, sensors, and a real-time communication link. The virtual building system on the computer communicates in real time with the hardware, that is, the physical model of TSD to evaluate on-the-fly the performance of a combined building-TSD system. External excitation including random loading characteristics of winds, waves, or earthquakes can be implemented in HIL to observe the dynamics of the building-damper system under a host of loading scenarios. An example of a recently completed tall reinforced concrete building with multiple TSDs placed side by side in double-decker configuration under a suite of external loads and the proposed damping estimation procedure to evaluate the amount of auxiliary damping with TSD for ensuring the TSD design is presented. It examines the habitability of the building in winds and evaluates the effectiveness of the TSD system as well as the efficacy of the first HIL simulation for an actual tall building-TSD system equipped with screens inside.