Experimental and numerical study on tuned liquid dampers for controlling earthquake response of jacket offshore platform

Earthquake loading has to be considered when the offshore platform is constructed in active fault zone. Tuned liquid dampers (TLD) have been proposed to control the dynamic response of structures. Liquid sloshing experiments on cylinder tank show the sloshing happens more seriously when the frequency of external excitation is close to the fundamental sloshing frequency of liquid. Lumped mass method is employed to numerically analyze the controlling earthquake effect on TLD. Based on TLDs the feasibility to control earthquake response of jacket platform is studied and applied to CB32A oil tank platform. Using extra TLDs in CB32A to control the seismic response of the platform is researched by the model test and numerical simulation. Lumped mass method can simulate the behavior of TLD during earthquake very well and gives close numerical results compared with those from model experiments. It has been found that the ratio of the fundamental sloshing frequency of liquid to the natural frequency of platform is the key factor to control earthquake response. The larger ratio of water-mass to platform-mass is also useful to reduce vibration as well.