• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.285-301
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• 2017

This paper presents the design and the application of a new self-powered hybrid electromagnetic damper that can harvest energy while mitigating the vibration of a structure. The damper is able to switch between an energy harvesting passive mode and a semi-active mode depending on the amount of energy harvested and stored in the battery. The energy harvested in the passive mode resulting from the suppression of vibration is employed to power up the monitoring and electronic components necessary for the semi-active control. This provides a hybrid control capability that is autonomous in terms of its power requirement. The proposed hybrid circuit design provides two possible options for the semi-active control: without energy harvesting and with energy harvesting. The device mechanism and the circuitry that can drive this self-powered electromagnetic damper are described in this paper. The parameters that determine the device feasible force-velocity region are identified and discussed. The effectiveness of this hybrid damper is evaluated through a numerical simulation study on vibration mitigation of a bridge stay cable under wind excitation. It is demonstrated that the proposed hybrid design outperforms the passive case without external power supply. It is also shown that a broader force range, facilitated by decoupled passive and semi-active modes, can improve the vibration performance of the cable.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.95-110
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• 2019

The semi-active impact damper (SAID) is proposed to improve the damping efficiency of traditional passive impact dampers. In order to investigate its damping mechanism and vibration control effects on realistic engineering structures, a 20-story nonlinear benchmark building is used as the main structure. The studies on system parameters, including the mass ratio, damping ratio, rigid coefficient, and the intensity of excitation are carried out, and their effects both on linear and nonlinear indexes are evaluated. The damping mechanism is herein further investigated and some suggestions for the design in high-rise buildings are also proposed. To validate the superiority of SAID, an optimal passive particle impact damper ($PID_{opt}$) is also investigated as a control group, in which the parameters of the SAID remain the same, and the optimal parameters of the $PID_{opt}$ are designed by differential evolution algorithm based on a reduced-order model. The numerical simulation shows that the SAID has better control effects than that of the optimized passive particle impact damper, not only for linear indexes (e.g., root mean square response), but also for nonlinear indexes (e.g., component energy consumption and hinge joint curvature).

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2005.03a
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• pp.505-512
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• 2005

MR damper is one of the most promising control devices for civil engineering applications to earthquake hazard mitigation. However, a control system including a power supply, controller, and sensors is required to maximize the performance of the MR damper and this complicated control system is not effective to most of large civil structures. This paper proposes and experimentally verified a smart passive damping system using MR(Magnetorheological) dampers by introducing electromagnetic induction(EMI) system as an external power source to MR damper. It is easy to build up and maintain EMI system, because it does not require any control system such as a power supply, controller, and sensors. Numerical simulations using experimental model of EMI system are carried to verify the effectiveness of the proposed EMI system. The performances of smart passive damping system are compared with those of passive and semiactive MR dampers.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.563-576
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• 2015

Over the past few decades, seismic retrofitting of structural systems has been significantly improved by the adoption of various methods such as FRP composite wraps, base isolation systems, and passive/active damper control systems. In parallel with this trend, probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) for structural and nonstructural components has become necessary for risk mitigation and the achievement of reliable designs in performance-based earthquake engineering. The primary objective of the present study was to evaluate the effect on piping fragility at T-joints due to seismic retrofitting of structural systems with passive energy-dissipation devices (i.e., linear viscous dampers). Three mid-rise building types were considered: without any seismic retrofitting; with distributed damper systems; with optimal placement of dampers. The results showed that the probability of piping system failure was considerably reduced in a Multi Degree of Freedom (MDOF) building retrofitted with optimal passive damper systems at lower floor levels. This effect of damper systems on piping fragility became insignificant as the floor level increased.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.537-551
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• 2019

In this paper, a method for analyzing the damping performance of stay cables incorporating magnetorheological (MR) dampers in the passive control mode is developed taking into account the cable sag and inclination, the damper coefficient, stiffness and mass, and the stiffness of damper support. Both numerical and asymptotic solutions are obtained from complex modal analysis. With the asymptotic solution, analytical formulas that evaluate the equivalent damping ratio of the sagged cable-damper system in consideration of all the above parameters are derived. The main thrust of the present study is to develop an general design formula and a universal curve for the optimal design of MR dampers for adjustable passive control of sagged cables. Two sag-affecting coefficients are derived to reflect the effects of cable sag on the maximum attainable damping ratio and the optimal damper coefficient. For the cable configurations commonly used in cable-stayed bridges, the sag-affecting coefficients are directly expressed in terms of the sag-extensibility parameter to facilitate the control design. A case study on adjustable passive vibration control of the longest cable (536 m) on Stonecutters Bridge is carried out to demonstrate the influence of the sag for the damper design, and to figure out the necessity of adjustability of damper coefficients for achieving maximum damping ratio for different vibration modes.

• 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.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.3 no.6
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• pp.805-820
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• 2012

An enhanced and efficient methodology is proposed for evaluating the robustness of an uncertain structure with passive dampers. Although the structural performance for seismic loads is an important design criterion in earthquake-prone countries, the structural parameters such as storey stiffnesses and damping coefficients of passive dampers are uncertain due to various factors or sources, e.g. initial manufacturing errors, material deterioration, temperature dependence. The concept of robust building design under such uncertain structural-parameter environment may be one of the most challenging issues to be tackled recently. By applying the proposed method of interval analysis and robustness evaluation for predicting the response variability accurately, the robustness of a passively controlled structure can be evaluated efficiently in terms of the so-called robustness function. An application is presented of the robustness function to the design and evaluation of passive damper systems.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.683-690
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• 2012

In this work, the semi-active control of a large-sized bus suspension system with an MR damper was studied. An MR damper model that can aptly describe the hysteretic characteristics of an MR damper was adopted. Parameter values of the MR damper model were suitably modified by considering the maximum damping force of a passive damper used in the suspension system of a real large-sized bus. In addition, a fuzzy logic controller was developed for semi-active control of a suspension system with an MR damper. The vertical acceleration at the attachment point of the MR damper and the relative velocity between sprung and unsprung masses were used as input variables, while voltage was used as the output variable. Straight-ahead driving simulations were performed on a road with a random road profile and on a flat road with a bump. In straight-ahead driving simulations, the vertical acceleration and pitch angle were measured to compare the riding performance of a suspension system with a passive damper with that of a suspension with an MR damper. In addition, a single lane change simulation was performed. In the simulation, the lateral acceleration and roll angle were measured in order to compare the handling performance of a suspension system using a passive damper with that of a suspension system using an MR damper.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.9 no.1 s.41
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• pp.51-59
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• 2005

Magnetorheological(MR) dampers are one of the most promising semi active control devices, because they have advantages such as small power requirement, reliability, and low price to manufacture. To reduce the responses of structures with MR dampers, a control system including power supply, controller, and sensors is required. However, when a mount of MR dampers are used to a large?scale civil structure such as cable stayed bridges, the control system becomes complex. Therefore, it is not easy to install and maintain the MR damper based control system. To resolve above difficulties, This paper proposes a smart passive system that consists of a MR damper and an electromagnetic induction(EMI) system. According to the Faraday’s law of induction, EMI system that is attached to the MR damper produces electric energy. The produced energy is supplied to the MR damper. Thus, the MR damper with EMI system does not require any power at all. Furthermore, the induced electric energy is proportional to external loads like earthquakes, which means the MR damper with EMI system is adaptable to external loads without any controller and corresponding sensors. Therefore, it is easy to build up and maintain the proposed smart passive system.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.105-112
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• 2015

A shared tuned mass damper (STMD) was proposed in previous research for reduction of dynamic responses of the adjacent buildings subjected to earthquake loads. A single STMD can provide similar control performance in comparison with two traditional TMDs. In previous research, a passive damper was used to connect the STMD with adjacent buildings. In this study, a smart magnetorheological (MR) damper was used instead of a passive damper to compose an adaptive smart STMD (ASTMD). Control performance of the ASTMD was investigated by numerical analyses. For this purpose, two 8-story buildings were used as example structures. Multi-input multi-output (MIMO) fuzzy logic controller (FLC) was used to control the command voltages sent to two MR dampers. The MIMO FLC was optimized by a multi-objective genetic algorithm. Numerical analyses showed that the ASTMD can effectively control dynamic responses of adjacent buildings subjected to earthquake excitations in comparison with a passive STMD.