• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.943-966
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• 2016

Recently, magnetorheological elastomer (MRE) material and its devices have been developed and attracted a good deal of attention for their potentials in vibration control. Among them, a highly adaptive base isolator based on MRE was designed, fabricated and tested for real-time adaptive control of base isolated structures against a suite of earthquakes. To perfectly take advantage of this new device, an accurate and robust model should be built to characterize its nonlinearity and hysteresis for its application in structural control. This paper first proposes a novel hysteresis model, in which a nonlinear hyperbolic sine function spring is used to portray the strain stiffening phenomenon and a Voigt component is incorporated in parallel to describe the solid-material behaviours. Then the fruit fly optimization algorithm (FFOA) is employed for model parameter identification using testing data of shear force, displacement and velocity obtained from different loading conditions. The relationships between model parameters and applied current are also explored to obtain a current-dependent generalized model for the control application. Based on the proposed model of MRE base isolator, a second-order sliding mode controller is designed and applied to the device to provide a real-time feedback control of smart structures. The performance of the proposed technique is evaluated in simulation through utilizing a three-storey benchmark building model under four benchmark earthquake excitations. The results verify the effectiveness of the proposed current-dependent model and corresponding controller for semi-active control of MRE base isolator incorporated smart structures.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.377-387
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• 2014

This study mainly treats a new type of the bracing friction damper system, which is able to minimize structural damage under earthquake loads. The slotted bolt holes are placed on the shear faying surfaces with an intention to dissipate considerable amount of friction energy. The superelastic shape memory alloy (SMA) wire strands are installed crossly between two plates for the purpose of enhancing recentering force that are able to reduce permanent deformation occurring at the friction damper system. The smart recentering friction damper system proposed in this study can be expected to reduce repair cost as compared to the conventional damper system because the proposed system mitigates the inter-story drift of the entire frame structure. The response mechanism of the proposed damper system is firstly investigated in this study, and then numerical analyses are performed on the component spring models calibrated to the experimental results. Based on the numerical analysis results, the seismic performance of the recentering friction damper system with respect to recentering capability and energy dissipation are investigated before suggesting optimal design methodology. Finally, nonlinear dynamic analyses are conducted by using the frame models designed with the proposed damper systems so as to verify superior performance to the existing damper systems.