The tuned liquid damper (TLD) is increasingly being used as an economical and effective vibration absorber. It consists of a water tank having the fundamental sloshing fluid frequency tuned to the natural frequency of the structure. In order to perform efficiently, the TLD must possess a certain amount of inherent damping. This can be achieved by placing screens inside the tank. The current study experimentally investigates the behaviour of a TLD equipped with damping screens. A series of shake table tests are conducted in order to assess the effect of the screens on the free surface motion, the base shear forces and the amount of energy dissipated. The variation of these parameters with the level of excitation is also studied. Finally, an amplitude dependent equivalent tuned mass damper (TMD), representing the TLD, is determined based on the experimental results. The dynamic characteristics of this equivalent TMD, in terms of mass, stiffness and damping parameters are determined by energy equivalence. The above parameters are expressed in terms of the base excitation amplitude. The parameters are compared to those obtained using linear small amplitude wave theory. The validity of this nonlinear model is examined in the companion paper.