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The Hidden Engineering of Liquid Dampers in Skyscrapers
- ggm 1y agoThe non liquid active tuned damper in Tapei 101 is a delight. Sprayed gold like a funky futurist nugget, set amongst massive hydraulic actuators. I'm not sure you could make a liquid tuned damper be a tourist attraction.
- mook 1y agoI wonder if it would be possible to use it as an indoor swimming pool instead? People should get out when it starts damping least they get tossed around quite a bit, of course…
- pishpash 1y agoBut they wouldn't get tossed around, that's the whole point? (Unless they are close to the pool boundary.)
- Havoc 1y agoCool video. I love the practical attempts at demos. Even if they don’t always work 100% it’s so much better than talking plus some semi relevant animations
- nosrepa 1y agoGrady loves his models.
- rkagerer 1y agoToward the end, he suggests water dampers serve a dual purpose to meet fire codes (having a reservoir of water atop your building). Does this create additional risk when firefighting operations draw it down? i.e. Do the dampers contribute meaningfully to short term structural integrity of the building (particularly in gusty weather), or are they mainly just for comfort and materials longevity? Has any building architected its liquid pool damper as a bonafide swimming pool?
- xhkkffbf 1y agoWhat are the odds that an earthquake could hit at the same time as a fire? What are the odds?
- ASalazarMX 1y agoAn earthquake during a fire seems unlikely, but a fire caused by an earthquake seem more likely. At least the latter would happen after the earthquake.
- rajnathani 1y agoYes, exactly - This is what occurred (fire from an earthquake) during the tragic 1906 San Francisco earthquake (and fire): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1906_San_Francisco_earthquake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1906_San_Francisco_earthquake
- chiph 1y agoI don't recall him mentioning how the viscosity of the fluid changes it's effectiveness, but I imagine it would. For reduced maintenance costs (prevent algae growth) they probably use mineral oil, not blue water.
- kllrnohj 1y agoSurely some biocide or glycol or whatever is going to be a lot cheaper than using mineral oil? This is solidly north of a hundred thousand gallons after all, right? Especially since they're already going to have plumbed water in the building anyway, so they wouldn't need to transport drums and drums of whatever liquid is chosen if it's not water?
- exmadscientist 1y ago300-400 tons of mineral oil is not expensive on industrial scales. And biocides are not as effective as you'd hope (look up biofilms for one particularly annoying example). So mineral oil is definitely a viable option. But its lower density means that water is probably going to win anyway.
- kllrnohj 1y agoQuick search says around $1,600 USD per ton for mineral oil? Taipei 101's damper is 660 tons. No idea how that compares to a fluid damper, but if we assume similar tonnage requirements that'd work out to somewhere in the range of $1M USD in mineral oil. Granted that's, what, 0.05% of the building cost? So in that sense "not a lot", sure, but compared to the almost nothing that it'd cost for an equivalent amount of industrial water, that still affords a lot of alternative solutions. Especially since it just needs to slosh around, does it even matter if stuff grows in it? It's not like there's going to be sunlight, either, so there wouldn't be much growth regardless right?
- giantg2 1y agoFill it with electro-ferric shock fluid