• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.55-62
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• 2004

In general, control performance of the active control system is superior to that of the passive control devices. However, the active system require a large amount of external energy to operate the actuators. Semi-active control systems maintain the reliability of the passive control systems while taking advantage of the adjustability of the active control system. In this research, a semi-active orificed fluid damper having the capacity of about 2 tons was designed and fabricated. It is a two-stage damper with normally open solenoid valve. A series of tests was performed to grasp its performance characteristics. It was also applied to a 6-story steel structure subjected to random and seismic excitations for the confirmation of its validity on structural vibration absorption.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.501-524
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• 2011

Recent studies have discovered that a conventional passive isolation system may suffer from an excessive isolator displacement when subjected to a near-fault earthquake that usually has a long-period velocity pulse waveform. Semi-active isolation using variable friction dampers (VFD), which requires a suitable control law, may provide a solution to this problem. To control the VFD in a semi-active isolation system more efficiently, this paper investigates experimentally the possible use of a control law whose control logic is similar to that of the anti-lock braking systems (ABS) widely used in the automobile industry. This ABS-type controller has the advantages of being simple and easily implemented, because it only requires the measurement of the isolation-layer velocity and does not require system modeling for gain design. Most importantly, it does not interfere with the isolation period, which usually decides the isolation efficiency. In order to verify its feasibility and effectiveness, the ABS-type controller was implemented on a variable-friction isolation system whose slip force is regulated by an embedded piezoelectric actuator, and a seismic simulation test was conducted for this isolation system. The experimental results demonstrate that, as compared to a passive isolation system with various levels of added damping, the semi-active isolation system using the ABS-type controller has the better overall performance when both the far-field and the near-fault earthquakes with different PGA levels are considered.

• 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.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.353-364
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• 2021

Natural hazards like earthquakes, high winds, and tsunami are a threat all the time for multi-story structures. The environmental forces cannot be clogged but the structures can be prevented from these natural hazards by using protective systems. The structural control can be achieved by using protective systems like the passive, active, semi-active, and hybrid protective systems; but the semi-active protective system has gained importance because of its adaptability to the active systems and reliability of the passive systems. Therefore, a semi-active protective system for the earthquake forces has been adopted in this work. Magneto-Rheological (MR) damper is used in the structure as a semi-active protective system; which is connected to the current driver and proposed controller. The Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) controller and reliable PID controller are two proposed controllers, which will actuate the MR damper and the desired force is generated to mitigate the vibration of the structural response subjected to the earthquake. PID controller and reliable PID controller are designed and tuned using Ziegler-Nichols tuning technique along with the MR damper simulated in Simulink toolbox and MATLAB to obtain the reduced vibration in a three-story benchmark structure. The earthquake is considered to be uncertain; where the proposed control algorithm works well during the presence of earthquake; this paper considers robustness to provide satisfactory resilience against this uncertainty. In this work, two different earthquakes are considered like El-Centro and Northridge earthquakes for simulation with different controllers. In this paper performances of the structure with and without two controllers are compared and results are discussed.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.14 no.8
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• pp.767-773
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• 2004

Semi-active control systems have attracted a great deal of attention in recent years, because they offer the adaptability of active devices without requiring large Power sources. One of the most Promising semi-active devices proposed for structural control is magneto-rheological fluid dampers (MR damper). In this paper, an MR damper having the capacity of about 1 ton was designed and fabricated. and series of tests were performed to grasp the fundamental Performance characteristics of it. It was also applied to a 6-story steel structure under random excitation and 3-different seismic excitations for the confirmation of its validity on structural vibration absorption. Through this study, the techniques and know-hows for MR damper production were acquired.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.287-301
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• 2004

Structural acceleration regulation is a means of managing structural response energy and enhancing the performance of civil structures undergoing large seismic events. A quadratic output regulator that minimizes a measure including the total structural acceleration energy is developed and tested on a realistic non-linear, semi-active structural control case study. Suites of large scaled earthquakes are used to statistically quantify the impact of this type of control in terms of changes in the statistical distribution of controlled structural response. This approach includes the impulses due to control inputs and is shown to be more effective than a typical displacement focused control approach, by providing equivalent or better performance in terms of displacement and hysteretic energy reductions, while also significantly reducing peak story accelerations and the associated damage and occupant injury. For earthquake engineers faced with the dilemma of balancing displacement and acceleration demands this control approach can significantly reduce that concern, reducing structural damage and improving occupant safety.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.691-708
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• 2016

Recently, number of smart material are investigated and widely used in civil construction and other industries. Present study investigates the application of smart semi-active piezoelectric friction damper (PFD) made with piezoelectric material for the seismic control of the horizontally curved bridge isolated with lead rubber bearing (LRB). The main aim of the study is to investigate the effectiveness of hybrid system and to find out the optimum parameters of PFD for seismic control of the curved bridge. The selected curved bridge is a continuous three-span concrete box girder supported on pier and rigid abutment. The PFD is located between the deck and abutments or piers in chord and radial directions. The bridge is excited with four different earthquake ground motions with all three components (i.e. two horizontal and a vertical) having different characteristics. It is observed that the use of semi-active PFD with LRB is quite effective in controlling the response of the curved bridge as compared with passive system. The incorporation of the smart damper requiring small amount of energy in addition with an isolation system can be used for effective control the curved bridge against the dynamic loading.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.1-20
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• 2008

The dynamic characteristics of the passive, semi-active, and active tuned-liquidcolumn dampers (or TLCDs) are studied in this paper. The design of the latter two are based on the first one. A water-head difference (or simply named as water head in this paper) of a passive TLCD is pre-set to form the so-called semi-active one in this paper. The pre-set of water head is released at a proper time instant during an earthquake excitation in order to enhance the vibration reduction of a structure. Two propellers are installed along a shaft inside and at the center of a passive TLCD to form an active one. These two propellers are driven by a servo-motor controlled by a computer to provide the control force. The seismic responses of a five-story shear building with a passive, semiactive, and active TLCDs are computed for demonstration and discussion. The responses of this building with a tuned mass damper (or TMD) are also included for comparison. The small-scale shaking-table experiments of a pendulum-like system with a passive or active TLCD to harmonic and seismic excitations are conducted for verification.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.1077-1099
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• 2016

One of the main shortcomings in the current passive base isolation system is lack of adaptability. The recent research and development of a novel adaptive seismic isolator based on magnetorheological elastomer (MRE) material has created an opportunity to add adaptability to base isolation systems for civil structures. The new MRE based base isolator is able to significantly alter its shear modulus or lateral stiffness with the applied magnetic field or electric current, which makes it a competitive candidate to develop an adaptive base isolation system. This paper aims at exploring suitable control algorithms for such adaptive base isolation system by developing a close-loop semi-active control system for a building structure equipped with MRE base isolators. The MRE base isolator is simulated by a numerical model derived from experimental characterization based on the Bouc-Wen Model, which is able to describe the force-displacement response of the device accurately. The parameters of Bouc-Wen Model such as the stiffness and the damping coefficients are described as functions of the applied current. The state-space model is built by analyzing the dynamic property of the structure embedded with MRE base isolators. A Lyapunov-based controller is designed to adaptively vary the current applied to MRE base isolator to suppress the quake-induced vibrations. The proposed control method is applied to a widely used benchmark base-isolated structure by numerical simulation. The performance of the adaptive base isolation system was evaluated through comparison with optimal passive base isolation system and a passive base isolation system with optimized base shear. It is concluded that the adaptive base isolation system with proposed Lyapunov-based semi-active control surpasses the performance of other two passive systems in protecting the civil structures under seismic events.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.255-262
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• 2008

In this study, seismic response control performance of decentralized response-dependent MR damper which generates the control force using only the response of damper-installed floor, was experimentally investigated through the tests of a full-scale structure installed with large MR dampers. The performance of the decentralized control algorithm was compared to those of the centralized ones such as Lyapunov, modulated homogeneous friction, and clipped-optimal control. Hybrid mass damper were controlled to induce seismic response of the full-scale structure under El Centro earthquake. Experimental results indicated that the proposed decentralized MR damper provided superior or equivalent performance to centralized one in spite of using damper-installed floor response for calculating input voltage to MR damper.