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The effectiveness of a tuned liquid column damper (TLCD) to reduce the lateral displacement response of a structure during seismic excitation is investigated. The TLCD uses the inertia of a moving column of liquid in a U-tube to reduce the lateral displacement response of the structure. Damping of the response is as a result of the headloss of the liquid column as it passes through an orifice inside the column. The optimisation of the mass ratio, length ratio, tuning ratio and the orifice damping coefficient of the TLCD are numerically investigated for a range of structural types. A series of real-time hybrid tests (RTHT) will be performed on the TLCD (physical substructure) whilst the remainder of the structure will be numerically modelled (numerical substructure). The velocity dependent behaviour, such as liquid sloshing, of the TLCD will be evaluated using a substructured RTHT. Comparison of the numerical model predictions and test results will allow extension of parameter optimisation of the TLCD through a purely numerical parametric study.