• 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.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.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.395-416
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• 2013

The magneto-rheological (MR) damper contributes to the new technology of structural vibration control. Its developments and applications have been paid significant attentions in earthquake engineering in recent years. Due to the shortages, however, inherent in deterministic control schemes where only several observed seismic accelerations are used as the trivial input and in classical stochastic optimal control theory with assumption of white noise process, the derived control policy cannot effectively accommodate the performance of randomly base-excited engineering structures. In this paper, the experimental and analytical studies on stochastic seismic response control of structures with specifically designed MR dampers are carried out. The random ground motion, as the base excitation posing upon the shaking table and the design load used for structural control system, is represented by the physically based stochastic ground motion model. Stochastic response analysis and reliability assessment of the tested structure are performed using the probability density evolution method and the theory of extreme value distribution. It is shown that the seismic response of the controlled structure with MR dampers gain a significant reduction compared with that of the uncontrolled structure, and the structural reliability is obviously strengthened as well.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.87-94
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• 2020

The present study is aimed to calculate the optimal damping according to the seismic load on the structure with a non-seismic design to perform structure analysis considering the deformation of structural joint connection and panel zone; to develop design program equipped with structural stability of the steel frame structures reinforced with the panel zone and viscous dampers, using the results of the analysis, in order to systematically integrate the seismic reinforcement of the non-seismic structures and the analysis and design of steel frame structures. The study results are as follows: When considering the deformation of the panel zone, the deformation has been reduced up to thickness of the panel double plate below twice the flange thickness, which indicates the effect of the double plate thickness on the panel zone, but the deformation showed uniform convergence when the ration is more than twice. The SMRPF system that was applied to this study determines the damping force and displacement by considering the panel zone to the joint connection and calculating the shear each floor for the seismic load at the same time. The result indicates that the competence of the damper is predictable that can secure seismic performance for the structures with non-seismic design without changing the cross-section of the members.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.557-572
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• 2012

This paper focuses on the vibration control of long-span reticulated steel structures under multi-dimensional earthquake excitation. The control system and strategy are constructed based on Magneto-Rheological (MR) dampers. The LQR and Hrovat controlling algorithm is adopted to determine optimal MR damping force, while the modified Bingham model (MBM) and inverse neural network (INN) is proposed to solve the real-time controlling current. Three typical long-span reticulated structural systems are detailedly analyzed, including the double-layer cylindrical reticulated shell, single-layer spherical reticulated shell, and cable suspended arch-truss structure. Results show that the proposed control strategy can reduce the displacement and acceleration effectively for three typical structural systems. The displacement control effect under the earthquake excitation with different PGA is similar, while for the cable suspended arch-truss, the acceleration control effect increase distinctly with the earthquake excitation intensity. Moreover, for the cable suspended arch-truss, the strand stress variation can also be effectively reduced by the MR dampers, which is very important for this kind of structure to ensure that the cable would not be destroyed or relaxed.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.85-105
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• 2006

Control of structural response due to seismic excitation in a manner of coupling adjacent buildings has been actively developed, and most attention focused on those buildings of similar height. However, with the rapid development of some modern cities, multi-story buildings constructed with an auxiliary low-rise podium structure to provide extra functions to the complex become a growing construction scheme. Being inspired by the positively examined coupling control approach for buildings with similar height, this paper aims to provide a comprehensive analytical study on control effectiveness of using friction dampers to link the two buildings with significant height difference to supplement the recent experimental investigation carried out by the writers. The analytical model of a coupled building system is first developed with passive friction dampers being modeled as Coulomb friction. To highlight potential advantage of coupling the main building and podium structure with control devices that provide a lower degree of coupling, the inherent demerit of rigid-coupled configuration is then evaluated. Extensive parametric studies are finally performed. The concerned parameters influencing the design of optimal friction force and control efficiency include variety of earthquake excitation and differences in floor mass, story number as well as number of dampers installed between the two buildings. In general, the feasibility of interaction control approach applied to the complex structure for vibration reduction due to seismic excitation is supported by positive results.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.61-67
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• 2018

This study proposes a new vibration control approach for adjacent twin structures, which is termed as viscous damper asymmetric coupling system in this paper. The proposed system takes a concept that the diagonal bracing viscous dampers are asymmetrically distributed in two buildings to break the behavior symmetry of the twin buildings and then the coupling viscous damper is additionally installed at the top floor of the two buildings to couple both buildings and interactively transfer the asymmetric behavior-caused damping forces into both buildings. These asymmetric damping distributions and interacting damping forces of the connection damper efficiently suppress the overall vibration of the damper-coupled adjacent twin buildings efficiently. Genetic algorithm (GA) based multi-objective optimization technique is adopted for optimal design of the proposed system. In the numerical example of adjacent twin 10-story building structures, the conventional control approach, that is, uniform damping distribution system (UDS) is also taken into account for comparison purpose. The optimization results verify that the proposed system either can improve the control performance over the UDS with the same damping capacity, or can save the damping capacity significantly while maintaining the similar level of control performance to the UDS.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.459-477
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• 2007

A bi-directional tuned mass damper (BTMD) in which a mass connected by two translational springs and two viscous dampers in two orthogonal directions has been introduced to control coupled lateral and torsional vibrations of asymmetric building. An efficient control strategy has been presented in this context to control displacements as well as acceleration responses of asymmetric buildings having asymmetry in both plan and elevation. The building is idealized as a simplified 3D model with two translational and a rotational degrees of freedom for each floor. The principles of rigid body transformation have been incorporated to account for eccentricity between center of mass and center of rigidity. The effective and robust design of BTMD for controlling the vibrations in structures has been presented. The redundancy of optimum design has been checked. Non dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA) has been used for tuning optimum stages and locations of BTMDs and its parameters for control of vibration of seismically excited buildings. The optimal locations have been observed to be reasonably compact and practically implementable.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.313-318
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• 2017

This study performs the structural analysis and the optimum design of a vibrating metal damper to absorb vibration energy. Unlike other dampers such as rubber bearing, friction or viscose dampers, the present vibrating metal damper utilizes the plastic deformation of a steel and its associated hysteresis phenomenon to reduce vibrations of structures. To optimize this vibrating metal damper, it is important to obtain plastic deformation through the damper. To achieve this, the shape optimization method is developed and applied to find out optimal envelopes of the metal damper. Depending on the parameterization scheme, some novel optimal shapes can be found.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.379-392
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• 2020

The paper presents a Life-Cycle Cost-based optimization framework for wind-excited tall buildings equipped with Tuned Mass Dampers (TMDs). The objective is to minimize the Life-Cycle Cost that comprises initial costs of the structure, the control system and costs related to repair, maintenance and downtime over the building's lifetime. The integrated optimization of structural sections and mass ratio of the TMDs is carried out, leading to a set of Pareto optimal solutions. The main advantage of the proposed methodology is that, differently from the traditional optimal design approach, it allows to perform the unified design of both the structure and the control system in a Life Cycle Cost Analysis framework. The procedure quantifies wind-induced losses, related to structural and nonstructural damage, considering the stochastic nature of the loads (wind velocity and direction), the specificity of the structural modeling (e.g., non-shear-type vibration modes and torsional effects) and the presence of the TMDs. Both serviceability and ultimate limit states related to the structure and the TMDs' damage are adopted for the computation of repair costs. The application to a case study tall building allows to demonstrate the efficiency of the procedure for the integrated design of the structure and the control system.