• 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.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.81-89
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• 2015

Damped outrigger systems have been proposed as a novel energy dissipation system to protect tall buildings from severe earthquakes and strong wind loads. In this study, semi-active damping devices such as magnetorheological (MR) dampers instead of passive dampers are installed vertically between the outrigger and perimeter columns to achieve large and adaptable energy dissipation. Control performance of semi-active outrigger damper system mainly depends on the control algorithm. Fuzzy logic control algorithm was used to generate command voltage sent to MR damper. Genetic algorithm was used to optimize the fuzzy logic controller. An artificial earthquake load was generated for numerical simulation. A simplified numerical model of damped outrigger system was developed. Based on numerical analyses, it has been shown that the semi-active damped outrigger system can effectively reduce both displacement and acceleration responses of the tall building in comparison with a passive outrigger damper system.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2014.10a
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• pp.26-27
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• 2014

This paper proposes a new bed stage system for vibration attenuation in patient compartment of ambulance. The bed stage which consist of four MR dampers can isolate vibration in the vertical, rolling and pitching directions. After evaluating dynamic characteristics of MR damper, 1/4 bed stage model is formulated. The sky hook controller is then utilized for vibration control. Finally, control responses of the bed stage equipped with MR dampers are presented.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2003.03a
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• pp.473-480
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• 2003

A new semiactive control strategy for seismic response reduction using a neuro-controller and a magnetorheological (MR) fluid damper is proposed. The proposed control system adopts a clipped algorithm which induces the MR damper to generate approximately the desired force. The improved neuro-controller, which was developed by employing the training algorithm based on a cost function and the sensitivity evaluation algorithm replacing an emulator neural network, produces the desired active control force, and then by using the clipped algorithm the appropriate command voltage is selected in order to cause the MR damper to generate the desired control force. The simulation results show that the proposed semiactive neuro-control algorithm is quite effective to reduce seismic responses. In addition, the semiactive control system using MR fluid dampers has many attractive features, such as bounded-input, bounded-output stability and small energy requirements. The results of this investigation, therefore, indicate that the proposed semiactive neuro-control strategy using MR fluid dampers could be effective used for control seismically excited structures.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.63-84
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• 2013

A semi-active mass damping (SMD) system with magnetorheological (MR) dampers focusing on low- and mid-rise buildings is proposed in this paper. The main purpose of this study is to integrate the reliable characteristics of the traditional tuned mass damper (TMD) and the superior performance of the active mass damper (AMD) to the new system. In addition, the commonly seen solution of deploying dense seismic dampers throughout the structure nowadays to protect the main structure is also expected to switch to the developed SMD system on the roof with a similar reduction performance. In order to demonstrate this concept, a full-size three-story steel building representing a typical mid-rise building was used as the benchmark structure to verify its performance in real life. A numerical model with the interpolation technique integrated was first established to accurately predict the behavior of the MR dampers. The success of the method was proven through a performance test of the designated MR damper used in this research. With the support of the MR damper model, a specific control algorithm using a continuous-optimal control concept was then developed to protect the main structure while the response of the semi-active mass damper is discarded. The theoretical analysis and the experimental verification from a shaking table test both demonstrated the superior mitigation ability of the method. The proposed SMD system has been demonstrated to be readily implemented in practice.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.6 no.8
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• pp.953-974
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• 2010

The performance of variable dampers for seismic protection of the benchmark highway bridge (phase I) under six real earthquake ground motions is presented. A simplified lumped mass finite-element model of the 91/5 highway bridge in Southern California is used for the investigation. A variable damper, developed from magnetorheological (MR) damper is used as a semi-active control device and its effectiveness with friction force schemes is investigated. A velocity-dependent damping model of variable damper is used. The effects of friction damping of the variable damper on the seismic response of the bridge are examined by taking different values of friction force, step-coefficient and transitional velocity of the damper. The seismic responses with variable dampers are compared with the corresponding uncontrolled case, and controlled by alternate sample control strategies. The results of investigation clearly indicate that the base shear, base moment and mid-span displacement are substantially reduced. In particular, the reduction in the bearing displacement is quite significant. The friction and the two-step friction force schemes of variable damper are found to be quite effective in reducing the peak response quantities of the bridge to a level similar to or better than that of the sample passive, semi-active and active controllers.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.75-92
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• 2016

The design of a semi-active (SA) control system addressed to mitigate wind induced structural demand to high wind turbine towers is discussed herein. Actually, the remarkable growth in height of wind turbines in the last decades, for a higher production of electricity, makes this issue pressing than ever. The main objective is limiting bending moment demand by relaxing the base restraint, without increasing the top displacement, so reducing the incidence of harmful "p-delta" effects. A variable restraint at the base, able to modify in real time its mechanical properties according to the instantaneous response of the tower, is proposed. It is made of a smooth hinge with additional elastic stiffness and variable damping respectively given by springs and SA magnetorheological (MR) dampers installed in parallel. The idea has been physically realized at the Denmark Technical University where a 1/20 scale model of a real, one hundred meters tall wind turbine has been assumed as case study for shaking table tests. A special control algorithm has been purposely designed to drive MR dampers. Starting from the results of preliminary laboratory tests, a finite element model of such structure has been calibrated so as to develop several numerical simulations addressed to calibrate the controller, i.e., to achieve as much as possible different, even conflicting, structural goals. The results are definitely encouraging, since the best configuration of the controller leaded to about 80% of reduction of base stress, as well as to about 30% of reduction of top displacement in respect to the fixed base case.

• Journal of Drive and Control
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.8-13
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• 2017

This paper proposes a hydraulic circuit for a Magnetorheological (MR) damper that can be used for semi-active and active controls. Methods are presented for obtaining reliable damping force displacement and velocity data, and hysteresis loop data corresponding to applied current. In order to get reliable data, analysis using electric and electronic software, a series of tests. and comparative evaluations are required. A hydraulic circuit model is proposed that can be applied to analyze a MR damper without any assumptions where the yield stress data according to the applied current are known. Analysis results of the proposed hydraulic circuit are confirmed by experimental results within acceptable tolerance. This hydraulic circuit model can be applied to various MR dampers and systems.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.71-80
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• 2021

In steel cable bridges, the use of magnetorheological (MR) dampers between butt cables is constantly increasing to dampen vibrations caused by rain and wind. The biggest problem in the actual applications of those devices is to launch a kind of appropriate algorithm that can effectively and efficiently suppress the perturbation of the tie through basic calculations and optimal solutions. This article discusses the optimal evolutionary design based on a linear and quadratic regulator (hereafter LQR) to lessen the perturbation of the bridges with cables. The control numerical algorithms are expected to effectively and efficiently decrease the possible risks of the structural response in amplification owing to the feedback force in the direction of the MR attenuator. In addition, these numerical algorithms approximate those optimal linear quadratic regulator control forces through the corresponding damping and stiffness, which significantly lessens the work of calculating the significant and optimal control forces. Therefore, it has been shown that it plays an important and significant role in the practical application design of semiactive MR control power systems. In the present proposed novel evolutionary parallel distributed compensator scheme, the vibrational control problem with a simulated demonstration is used to evaluate the numerical algorithmic performance and effectiveness. The results show that these semiactive MR control numerical algorithms which are present proposed in the present paper has better performance than the optimal and the passive control, which is almost reaching the levels of linear quadratic regulator controls with minimal feedback requirements.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.8 no.5 s.39
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• pp.55-64
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• 2004

In this paper, the preliminary design procedure of magnetorheological (MR) dampers is developed for controlling the building response induced by seismic excitation. The dynamic characteristics and control effects of the modeling methods of MR dampers such as Bingham, biviscous, hysteretic biviscous, simple Bouc?Wen, Bouc?Wen with mass element, and phenomenological models are investigated. Of these models, hysteretic biviscous model which is simple and capable describing the hysteretic characteristics, is used for numerical studies. The capacity of MR damper is determined as a portion of not the building weight but the lateral restoring force. A method is proposed for optimal placement and number of MR dampers, and its effectiveness is verified by comparing it with the simplified sequential search algorithm. Numerical results indicate that the capacity, number and the placement can be reasonably determined using the proposed design procedure.