Evaluation of viscous damper on the vibration transmission to the piping system and the support structure exposed to sinusoidal vibration in vertical, horizontal, and lateral directions.

Abstract Viscous dampers have been shown to be a potential solution to addressing piping vibration problems. The primary objective of this study is to confirm the ability of viscous dampers in addressing piping vibration problem in a piping system at different supporting structural stiffness. The piping systems were fabricated and arranged horizontally, vertically, and axially with respect to the direction of the input vibration force. Input force was applied to the piping system using an electromagnetic shaker. A sinusoidal vertical vibration at a 5 Hz frequency (21 mm/s RMS) was applied at one end of the piping system. The use of viscous damper was varied from no viscous damper to one, two and three dampers. Results showed that having three viscous dampers installed caused the piping vibration at point P2 showed the maximum reduction in vibration of up to 80% for three axes, respectively. For the case of structural vibration, the measurement results showed that point S1 experienced the highest vibration exposure before the installation of the viscous dampers, in all axes. With the three viscous dampers installed, the maximum vibration reduction for the sinusoidal vibration test case at point S1 were 86% and 91% for the x- and z -axes, respectively. In conclusion, viscous dampers able to reduce both the piping and structural vibration in multiple axes. This study also highlights the importance of positioning dampers in reducing piping vibration and vibration transmitted to the structure, with reduction up to 90% amplitude for sinusoidal input and 80% for random input.