• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.1001-1025
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• 2016

Building structures generally have inherent low damping capability and hence are vulnerable to seismic excitations. Control devices therefore play a useful role in providing safety to building structures subject to seismic events. In recent years semi-active dampers have gained considerable attention as structural control devices in the building construction industry. Magneto-rheological (MR) damper, a type of semi-active damper has proven to be effective in seismic mitigation of building structures. MR dampers contain a controllable MR fluid whose rheological properties vary rapidly with the applied magnetic field. Although some research has been carried out on the use of MR dampers in building structures, optimal design of MR damper and combined use of MR and passive dampers for real scale buildings has hardly been investigated. This paper investigates the use of MR dampers and incorporating MR-passive damper combinations in building structures in order to achieve acceptable levels of seismic performance. In order to do so, it first develops the MR damper model by integrating control algorithms commonly used in MR damper modelling. The developed MR damper is then integrated in to the seismically excited structure as a time domain function. Linear and nonlinear structure models are evaluated in real time scenarios. Analyses are conducted to investigate the influence of location and number of devices on the seismic performance of the building structure. The findings of this paper provide information towards the design and construction of earthquake safe buildings with optimally employed MR dampers and MR-passive damper combinations.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.539-552
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• 2022

Concentrically braced frames (CBFs) possess high stiffness and strength against lateral loads; however, they suffer from low energy absorption capacity against seismic loads due to the susceptibility of CBF diagonal elements to bucking under compression loading. To address this problem, in this study, an innovative damper was proposed and investigated experimentally and numerically. The proposed damper comprises main plates and includes a flange plate angled at θ and a trapezius-shaped web plate surrounded by the plate at the top and bottom sections. To investigate the damper behaviour, dampers with θ = 0°, 30°, 45°, 60°, and 90° were evaluated with different flange plate thicknesses of 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 mm. Dampers with θ = 0° and 90° create rectangular-shaped and I-shaped shear links, respectively. The results indicate that the damper with θ = 30° exhibits better performance in terms of ultimate strength, stiffness, overstrength, and distribution stress over the damper as compared to dampers with other angles. The hysteresis curves of the dampers confirm that the proposed damper acts as a ductile fuse. Furthermore, the web and flange plates contribute to the shear resistance, with the flange carrying approximately 80% and 10% of the shear force for dampers with θ = 30° and 90°, respectively. Moreover, dampers that have a larger flange-plate shear strength than the shear strength of the web exhibit behaviours in linear and nonlinear zones. In addition, the over-strength obtained for the damper was greater than 1.5 (proposed by AISC for shear links). Relevant relationships are determined to predict and design the damper and the elements outside it.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.307-318
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• 2019

The frequently excessive vibrations presented in civil structures during seismic events or service conditions may result in users' discomfort, or worst, in structures failure, producing economic and even human casualties. This work contributes in proposing the synthesis of a nonlinear optimal control strategy for semiactive structural control, with the main characteristic that the synthesis considers both the structure model and the semiactive actuator nonlinear dynamics, which produces a nonlinear system that requires a nonlinear controller design. The aim is to reduce the unwanted vibrations in the response of civil structures, by means of intelligent fluid semiactive actuator such as the Magnetorheological Damper (MRD), which is a device with a low level of power consumption. The civil structures for which the proposed control methodology can be applied are those admitting a state-dependent coefficient factorized representation model, such as buildings, bridges, among others. A scaled model of a three storey building is analyzed as a case study, whose dynamical response involves displacement, velocity and acceleration of each one of the storeys, subjected to the North-South component of the September 19th., 2017, Puebla-Morelos (7.1M), Mexico earthquake. The investigation rests on comparing the structural response over time for two different conditions: with no control device installed and with one MRD installed between the first floor and the ground, where a nonlinear optimal signal for the MRD input voltage is determined. Simulation results are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed controller for reducing the building's dynamical response.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.153-160
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• 2003

The objective of optimal placement of dampers for a structure is to maximize the effective-ness of the vibration control with the same number of dampers. While many optimal placement methods of linear viscous dampers have been proposed and used, there are only a few methods for MR dampers. Here some optimal location indices for M dampers are proposed, which are similar to those for linear viscous dampers and show how large the structural responses on each floor are. Every time an additional MR damper is implemented, the optimal location index on each floor is measured, and then the next damper is installed on the floor with the maximum location index. In these sequential procedures, the peak interstory drift, the peak interstory velocity and the absolute acceleration of each floor are selected as the optimal location indeices. Four different earthquakes with various scales are loaded to the 20-story nonlinear benchmark building model (Otori et al. 2000, 2002). Passive On/on algorithms are used in order to represent the control algorithm of M dampers.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2003.09a
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• pp.467-472
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• 2003

The objective of optimal placement of dampers for a structure is to maximize the effectiveness of the vibration control with the same number of dampers. While many optimal placement methods of linear viscous dampers have been proposed and used, there are only a few methods for MR dampers. Here some optimal location indices for MR dampers are proposed, which are similar to those for linear viscous dampers and show how large the structural responses on each floor we. Every time an additional MR damper is implemented, the optimal location index on each floor is measured, and then the next damper is installed on the floor with the maximum location index. In these sequential procedures, the peak interstory drift, the peak interstory velocity and the absolute acceleration of each floor are selected as the optimal location indeices. Four different earthquakes with various scales are loaded to the 20-story nonlinear benchmark building model (Otori et at. 2000, 2002). Passive On/Off algorithms are used in order to represent the control algorithm of MR dampers.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.89-105
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• 2008

The paper presents a study on the effects of soil-structure-interaction (SSI) on the performance of the compliant liquid column damper (CLCD) for the seismic vibration control of short period structures. The frequency-domain formulation for the input-output relation of a flexible-base structure with CLCD has been derived. The superstructure has been modeled as a linear, single degreeof-freedom (SDOF) system. The foundation has been considered to be attached to the underlying soil medium through linear springs and viscous dashpots, the properties of which have been represented by complex valued impedance functions. By using a standard equivalent linearization technique, the nonlinear orifice damping of the CLCD has been replaced by equivalent linear viscous damping. A numerical stochastic study has been carried out to study the functioning of the CLCD for varying degrees of SSI. Comparison of the damper performance when it is tuned to the fixed-base structural frequency and when tuned to the flexible-base structural frequency has been made. The effects of SSI on the optimal value of the orifice damping coefficient of the damper has also been studied. A more convenient approach for designing the damper while considering SSI, by using an established model of a replacement oscillator for the structure-soil system has also been presented. Finally, a simulation study, using a recorded accelerogram, has been carried out on the CLCD performance for the flexible-base structure.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.679-698
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• 2008

On marine vessels, delicate instruments such as navigation radars are normally mounted on ship masts. However the vibrations at the top of mast where the radar is mounted often cause serious deterioration in radar-tracking resolution. The most serious problem is caused by the rotational vibrations at the top of mast that may be due to wind loading, inertial loading from ship rolling and base excitations induced by the running propeller. This paper presents a method of semi-active vibration control using magneto-rheological (MR) dampers to reduce the rotational vibration of the mast. In the study, the classical optimal control algorithm, the independent modal space control algorithm and the double input - single output fuzzy control algorithm are employed for the vibration control. As the phenomenological model of an MR damper is highly nonlinear, which is difficult to analyse, a back- propagation neural network is trained to emulate the inverse dynamic characteristics of the MR damper in the analysis. The trained neural network gives the required voltage for each MR damper based on the displacement, velocity and control force of the MR damper quickly. Numerical simulations show that the proposed control methods can effectively suppress the rotational vibrations at the top of mast.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.13-21
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• 2001

Electrorheological(ER) fluid is a kind of smart material with variable shear stress and dynamic viscosity under various electric field intensity. Electric field can control the damping characteristics of ER damper. The objective of this study is the analysis of the performance of ER damper and its application to shock absorber. Idealized nonlinear Bingham plastic shear flow model is used to predict the velocity profile between electrodes. Cylindrical dashpot ER damper with moving electrode is constructed and tested under various electric fields. The analytic and experimental results for damping force are compared and discussed. Drop test system using ER damper is prepared to identify transient vibration characteristics. The rebound is eased as the applied electric field increases. When semi-active control algorithm is applied, rebound phenomenon disappears and vibration energy level decays faster than the case of zero electric field.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.31-37
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• 2014

For the vibration control of residential buildings, a multiple type slim damper system is developed and dynamic performance test is performed in this study. In conventional damping systems, larger installation space is required in order to achieve acceptable seismic performance, and as a result, it is difficult to determine efficient damping capacity of the device. The proposed damping device is composed of several small slim type dampers and linkage units. It can control damping capacity easily by changing the number of the small damper. To evaluate the proposed damping device, three slim type dampers (single-type, triple-type and penta-type) are designed and manufactured in real scale. Dynamic loading tests are performed by using the three manufactured dampers. From the tests, it is shown that damping coefficient is proportional to the number of the damper combined. Thus, test results validates the practicality of the proposed slim type dampers. applying nonlinear curve fitting technique, numerical model of the dampers are developed and presented.

• International journal of steel structures
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.1325-1335
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• 2018

This study dealt with investigating the seismic performance of the smart and shape memory alloy (SMA) and magnets plus rubber-spring (MRS) dampers and their effects on the seismic resistance of multiple-span simply supported bridges. The rubber springs in the MRS dampers were pre-compressed. For this aim, a set of experimental works was performed together with developing nonlinear analytical models to investigate dynamic responses of the bridges subjected to earthquakes. Fragility analysis and probabilistic assessment were conducted to assess the seismic performance for the overall bridge system. Fragility curves were then generated for each model and were compared with those of as-built. Results showed dampers could increase the seismic capacity of bridges. Furthermore, from system fragility curves, use of damper models reduced the seismic vulnerability in comparison to the as-built bridge model. Although the SMA damper showed the best seismic performance, the MRS damper was the most appropriate one for the bridge in that the combination of magnetic friction and pre-compressed rubber springs was cheaper than the shape memory alloy, and had the similar capability of the damper.