• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.66 no.2
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• pp.161-172
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• 2018

The passive control of structures using a pendulum tuned mass damper has been extensively studied in the technical literature. As the frequency of the pendulum depends only on its length and the acceleration of gravity, to tune the frequency of the pendulum with that of the structure, the pendulum length is the only design variable. However, in many cases, the required length and the space necessary for its installation are not compatible with the design. In these cases, one can replace the classical pendulum by a virtual pendulum which consists of a mass moving over a curved surface, allowing thus for a greater flexibility in the absorber design, since the length of the pendulum becomes irrelevant and the shape of the curved surface can be optimized. A mathematical model for a building with a pendular tuned mass damper and a detailed parametric analysis is conducted to study the influence of this device on the nonlinear oscillations and stability of the main system under harmonic and seismic base excitation. In addition to the circular profiles, different curved surfaces with softening and hardening characteristics are analyzed. Also, the influence of impact on energy dissipation is considered. A detailed parametric analysis is presented showing that the proposed damper can not only reduce sharply the displacements, and consequently the internal forces in the main structure, but also the accelerations, increasing user comfort. A review of the relevant aspects is also presented.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.235-256
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• 2005

The non-linear behaviour of electrorheological (ER) and magnetorheological (MR) dampers makes it difficult to design effective control strategies, and as a consequence a wide range of control systems have been proposed in the literature. These previous studies have not always compared the performance to equivalent passive systems, alternative control designs, or idealised active systems. As a result it is often impossible to compare the performance of different smart damper control strategies. This article provides some insight into the relative performance of two MR damper control strategies: on/off control and feedback linearisation. The performance of both strategies is benchmarked against ideal passive, semi-active and fully active damping. The study relies upon a previously developed model of an MR damper, which in this work is validated experimentally under closed-loop conditions with a broadband mechanical excitation. Two vibration isolation case studies are investigated: a single-degree-of-freedom mass-isolator, and a two-degree-of-freedom system that represents a vehicle suspension system. In both cases, a variety of broadband mechanical excitations are used and the results analysed in the frequency domain. It is shown that although on/off control is more straightforward to implement, its performance is worse than the feedback linearisation strategy, and can be extremely sensitive to the excitation conditions.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.2 no.3 s.5
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• pp.103-113
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• 2002

This thesis investigates vibration response characteristics of building frames in which dampers are installed. The frames belong to passively vibration-controlled. Structures which utilizes energy dissipation of mechanical dampers provided in the structure. In this thesis, a turbulent flow damper sealed by visco-elastic material was dealt with as the device of passive vibration control. To investigate the resisting force characteristics of the damper, harmonic vibratration tests were carried out. Based on the test results, a theoretical model of the damper resistance was presented and a method of identifying the model parameters was proposed. Shaking table tests of the frame with and without the dampers were carried out and the effectiveness of the damper was examined. The response of the frame with the dampers was reduced to 1/2 or 1/3 of the cases without the damper.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2014.10a
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• pp.23-25
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• 2014

This paper is concerned with design and control of semi-active tuned mass damper. The equipment consists of permanent magnet and coil. If current flowing in coil is changed, the natural frequency of the semi-active tuned mass damper is changed. In previous research, a current flowing in coil was changed manually. In this time, we design the feedback control system. The experiment proceed that the excitation frequency is shifted from 4Hz to 9Hz. The result of experiment proves that semi-active tuned mass damper is better than passive tuned mass damper in performance of absorbing vibration.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.225-238
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• 2021

Supplemental passive dampers are widely employed to improve the structural performance of buildings under seismic excitations. Nevertheless, the added damping could be counter-productive if the axial forces induced by the damper reaction forces are not routed properly in the columns. A few researchers engaged to optimize the width-wise damper arrangement to improve the delivered path of the axial column forces. However, most of these studies are limited under the design-based seismic level and few of them has evaluated the collapse performance of buildings under strong earthquakes. In this paper, the strategic width-wise placement method of viscous dampers is explored regarding the building performance under collapse state. Two realistic steel buildings with different storeys are modelled and compared to explore higher mode effects. Each building is designed with four different damper arrangement scenarios based on a classic damper distribution method. Both a far-fault and a near-fault seismic environment are considered for the buildings. Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA) is performed to evaluate the probability of collapse and the plastic mechanism of the retrofitted steel buildings.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.83 no.1
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• pp.31-43
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• 2022

A nonlinear gas-spring tuned mass damper is proposed to mitigate the seismic responses of the multi-degree-of-freedom (MDOF) structure, in which the nine-story benchmark model is selected as the controlled object. The nonlinear mechanical properties of the gas-spring are investigated through theoretical analysis and experiments, and the damper's control parameters are designed. The control performance and damping mechanism of the proposed damper attached to the MDOF structure are systematically studied, and its reliability is also explored by parameter sensitivity analysis. The results illustrate that the nonlinear gas-spring TMD can transfer the primary structure's vibration energy from the lower to the higher modes, and consume energy through its own relative movement. The proposed damper has excellent "Reconciling Control Performance", which not only has a comparable control effect as the linear TMD, but also has certain advantages in working stroke. Furthermore, the control parameters of the gas-spring TMD can be determined according to the external excitation amplitude and the gas-spring's initial volume.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.60 no.3
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• pp.471-488
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• 2016

This study predicts the strength of rotary brace damper by analyzing a new set of probabilistic models using the usual method of multiple linear regressions (MLR) and advanced machine-learning methods of multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS), Rotary brace damper can be easily assembled with high energy-dissipation capability. To investigate the behavior of this damper in structures, a steel frame is modeled with this device subjected to monotonic and cyclic loading. Several response parameters are considered, and the performance of damper in reducing each response is evaluated. MLR and MARS methods were used to predict the strength of this damper. Displacement was determined to be the most effective parameter of damper strength, whereas the thickness did not exhibit any effect. Adding thickness parameter as inputs to MARS and MLR models did not increase the accuracies of the models in predicting the strength of this damper. The MARS model with a root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.127 and mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.090 performed better than the MLR model with an RMSE of 0.221 and MAE of 0.181.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.1003-1021
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• 2015

MR dampers have been proposed for the control of cable vibration of cable-stayed bridge in recent years due to their high performance and low energy consumption. However, the highly nonlinear feature of MR dampers makes them difficult to be designed with efficient semi-active control algorithms. Simulation study has previously been carried out on the cable-MR damper system using a semi-active control algorithm derived based on the universal design curve of dampers and a bilinear mechanical model of the MR damper. This paper aims to verify the effectiveness of the MR damper for mitigating cable vibration through a full-scale experimental test, using the same semi-active control strategy as in the simulation study. A long stay cable fabricated for a real bridge was set-up with the MR damper installed. The cable was excited under both free and forced vibrations. Different test scenarios were considered where the MR damper was tuned as passive damper with minimum or maximum input current, or the input current of the damper was changed according to the proposed semi-active control algorithm. The effectiveness of the MR damper for controlling the cable vibration was assessed through computing the damping ratio of the cable for free vibration and the root mean square value of acceleration of the cable for forced vibration.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.181-195
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• 2010

Coupled building control is a viable method to protect tall buildings from seismic excitation. In this study, the semi-active control of a building complex is investigated for mitigating seismic responses. The building complex is formed of one main building and one podium structure connected through Magneto-Rheological (MR) Dampers and Tuned Mass Damper. The conventional semi-active control techniques require a primary controller as a reference to determine the desired control force, and modulate the input voltage of the MR damper by comparing the desired control force. The fuzzy logic directly determines the input voltage of an MR damper from the response of the MR damper. The control performance of the proposed fuzzy control technique for the MR damper is evaluated for the control problem of a seismically-excited building complex. In this paper, a building complex that include a 14-story main building and an 8-story podium structure is applied as a numerical example to demonstrate the effectiveness of semi-active control with Magneto-Rheological dampers and its comparison with the passive control with the Tuned Mass Damper and two uncoupled buildings and hybrid semi-active control including the Tuned Mass Damper and Magneto-Rheological dampers while they are subject to the earthquake excitation. The numerical results show that semi-active control and hybrid semi-active control can significantly mitigate the seismic responses of both buildings, such as displacement and shear force responses, and fuzzy control technique can effectively mitigate the seismic response of the building complex.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.35-53
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• 2012

Mechanical dampers have been proved to be one of the most effective countermeasures for vibration mitigation of stay cables in various cable-stayed bridges over the world. However, for long stay cables, as the installation height of the damper is restricted due to the aesthetic concern, using passive dampers alone may not satisfy the control requirement of the stay cables. In this connection, semi-active MR dampers have been proposed for the vibration mitigation of long stay cables. Although various studies have been carried out on the implementation of MR dampers on stay cables, the optimal damping performance of the cable-MR damper system has yet to be evaluated. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the effectiveness of MR damper as a semi-active control device for the vibration mitigation of stay cable. The mathematical model of the MR damper will first be established through a performance test. Then, an efficient semi-active control strategy will be derived, where the damping of MR damper will be tuned according to the dynamic characteristics of stay cable, in order to achieve optimal damping of cable-damper system. Simulation study will be carried out to verify the proposed semi-active control algorithm for suppressing the cable vibrations induced by different loading patterns using optimally tuned MR damper. Finally, the effectiveness of MR damper in mitigating multi modes of cable vibration will be examined theoretically.