Utilising computational fluid dynamics to investigate damping effects in fluid inerter-based vibration control devices

Over the past two decades, inerters have attracted significant attention in structural control. Numerous applications in engineering fields have proposed employing inerter-based control devices to mitigate structural vibrations. While theoretical studies have demonstrated performance enhancements, practical implementation and experimental validation have remained limited primarily due to cost and technical challenges. Studies conducted with the physically built inerters have showed discrepancies between theoretical model of the inerter and its actual performance because of factors such as nonlinearities and damping effects. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) can provide a more accurate model of the inerter without the need for costly experimental setups. This paper presents a CFD analysis aimed at evaluating the actual performance of a fluid inerter-based control device for vibration mitigation of single degree of freedom (SDOF) structure. The accurate modeling of the inerter obtained through CFD is used to evaluate the performance of the inerter-based control device. The results reveal an important difference between vibration mitigation performance when comparing the ideal theoretical model and the CFD model.