• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.303-309
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• 2017

Structural control through seismic isolation using elastomeric rubber bearing, which is also known as High Damping Rubber Bearing (HDRB), has seen an increase in use to provide protective from earthquake, especially for new buildings in earthquake zones. Besides, HDRB has also been used in structural rehabilitation of older yet significant buildings, such as museums and palaces. However, the present design approach applied in normal practice has often resulted in dissimilar HDRB dimension requirement between structural designers and bearing manufacturers mainly due to ineffective communication. Therefore, in order to ease the design process, most HDRB manufacturers have come up with catalogs that list all necessary and relevant product lines specifically for structural engineers to choose from. In fact, these catalogs contain physical dimension, compression property, shear characteristic, and most importantly, the total rubber thickness. Nonetheless, other complicated issues, such as the relationship between target isolation period and displacement demand (which determines the total rubber thickness), are omitted due to cul-de-sac fixing of these values in the catalogs. As such, this paper presents a formula, which is derived and extended from the present design approach, in order to offer a simple guideline for engineers to estimate the required HDRB size. This improved design formula successfully minimizes the discrepancies stumbled upon among structural designers, builders, and rubber bearing manufacturers in terms of variation order issue at the designing stage because manufacturer of isolator is always the last to be appointed in most projects.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.831-845
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• 2014

This paper proposed a discrete wavelet transform based method for time-varying physical parameter identification of shear type structures. The time-varying physical parameters are dispersed and expanded at multi-scale as profile and detail signal using discrete wavelet basis. To reduce the number of unknown quantity, the wavelet coefficients that reflect the detail signal are ignored by setting as zero value. Consequently, the time-varying parameter can be approximately estimated only using the scale coefficients that reflect the profile signal, and the identification task is transformed to an equivalent time-invariant scale coefficient estimation. The time-invariant scale coefficients can be simply estimated using regular least-squares methods, and then the original time-varying physical parameters can be reconstructed by using the identified time-invariant scale coefficients. To reduce the influence of the ill-posed problem of equation resolving caused by noise, the Tikhonov regularization method instead of regular least-squares method is used in the paper to estimate the scale coefficients. A two-story shear type frame structure with time-varying stiffness and damping are simulated to validate the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed method. It is demonstrated that the identified time-varying stiffness is with a good accuracy, while the identified damping is sensitive to noise.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.419-434
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• 2014

In this paper, the electromagnetic damper (EMD), which is composed of a permanent-magnet rotary DC motor, a ball screw and a nut, is considered to be analyzed as a semi-active damper. The main objective pursued in the paper is to study the two degrees of freedom (DOF) model of the semi-active electromagnetic suspension system (SAEMSS) performance and energy regeneration controlled by on-off and continuous damping control strategies. The nonlinear equations of the SAEMSS must therefore be extracted. The effects of the EMD characteristics on ride comfort, handling performance and road holding for the passive electromagnetic suspension system (PEMSS) are first analyzed and damping control strategies effects on the SAEMSS performance and energy regeneration are investigated next. The results obtained from the simulation show that the SAEMSS provides better performance and more energy regeneration than the PEMSS. Moreover, the results reveal that the on-off hybrid control strategy leads to better performance in comparison with the continuous skyhook control strategy, however, the energy regeneration of the continuous skyhook control strategy is more than that of the on-off hybrid control strategy (except for on-off skyhook control strategy).

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.363-372
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• 2010

Accurate peak response estimation of a seismically excited structure with frictional damping system (FDS) is very difficult since the structure with FDS shows nonlinear behavior dependent on the structural period, loading characteristics, and relative magnitude between the frictional force and the excitation load. Previous studies have estimated the peak response of the structure with FDS by replacing a nonlinear system with an equivalent linear one or by employing the response spectrum obtained based on nonlinear time history and statistical analysis. In case that earthquake excitation is defined probabilistically, corresponding response of the structure with FDS becomes to have probabilistic distribution. In this study, nonlinear time history analyses were performed for the structure with FDS subjected to artificial earthquake excitation generated using Kanai-Tajimi filter. An equation for the probability density function (PDF) of the displacement response is proposed by adapting the PDF of the normal distribution. Coefficients of the proposed PDF are obtained by regression of the statistical distribution of the time history responses. Finally, the correlation between the resulting PDFs and statistical response distribution is investigated.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.1-14
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• 2018

A method is proposed to detect structural damages in the presence of damping using noisy data. This method uses Frequency Response Function (FRF) and Mode-Shapes as the input parameters for a system of Couple Sparse Coding (CSC) to study the healthy state of the structure. To obtain appropriate patterns of FRF for CSC training, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) technique is adopted to reduce the full-size FRF to overcome over-fitting and convergence problems in machine-learning training. To verify the proposed method, a numerical two-story frame structure is employed. A system of individual CSCs is trained with FRFs and mode-shapes, and then termed ensemble to detect the health condition of the structure. The results demonstrate that the proposed method is accurate in damage identification even in presence of up to 20% noisy data and 5% unconsidered damping ratio. Furthermore, it can be concluded that CSC ensemble is highly efficient to detect the location and the severity of damages in comparison to the individual CSC trained only with FRF data.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.543-557
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• 2020

This paper presents a series of experimental and numerical investigations on a vertical isolation system with quasi-zero stiffness (QZS) property. The isolation system comprises a linear helical spring and disk spring. The disk spring is designed to provide variable stiffness to the system. Orthogonal static tests with different design parameters are conducted to verify the mathematical and mechanical models of the isolation system. The deviations between theoretical and test results influenced by the design parameters are summarized. Then, the dynamic tests for the systems with different under-load degrees are performed, including the fast sweeping tests, harmonic excitation tests, and half-sine impact tests. The displacement transmissibility, vibration reduction rate, and free vibration response are calculated. Based on the test results, the variation of the transmission rule is evaluated and the damping magnitudes and types are identified. In addition, the relevant numerical time history responses are calculated considering the nonlinear behavior of the system. The results indicate that the QZS isolation system has a satisfactory isolation effect, while a higher damping level can potentially promote the isolation performance in the low-frequency range. It is also proved that the numerical calculation method accurately predicts the transmission character of the isolation system.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.13-21
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• 2001

Electrorheological(ER) fluid is a kind of smart material with variable shear stress and dynamic viscosity under various electric field intensity. Electric field can control the damping characteristics of ER damper. The objective of this study is the analysis of the performance of ER damper and its application to shock absorber. Idealized nonlinear Bingham plastic shear flow model is used to predict the velocity profile between electrodes. Cylindrical dashpot ER damper with moving electrode is constructed and tested under various electric fields. The analytic and experimental results for damping force are compared and discussed. Drop test system using ER damper is prepared to identify transient vibration characteristics. The rebound is eased as the applied electric field increases. When semi-active control algorithm is applied, rebound phenomenon disappears and vibration energy level decays faster than the case of zero electric field.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.93-115
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• 2016

A particle tuned mass damper (PTMD) system is the combination of a traditional tuned mass damper (TMD) and a particle damper (PD). This paper presents the results of an experimental and analytical study of the damping performance of a PTMD attached to the top of a benchmark model under wind load excitation. The length ratio of the test model is 1:200. The vibration reduction laws of the system were explored by changing some system parameters (including the particle material, total auxiliary mass ratio, the mass ratio between container and particles, the suspending length, and wind velocity). An appropriate analytical solution based on the concept of an equivalent single-unit impact damper is presented. Comparison between the experimental and analytical results shows that, with the proper use of the equivalent method, reasonably accurate estimates of the dynamic response of a primary system under wind load excitation can be obtained. The experimental and simulation results show the robustness of the new damper and indicate that the damping performance can be improved by controlling the particle density, increasing the amount of particles, and aggravating the impact of particles etc.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.31-52
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• 2016

The paper first reviews the theory of active tendon control with decentralized Integral Force Feedback (IFF) and collocated displacement actuator and force sensor; a formal proof of the formula giving the maximum achievable damping is provided for the first time. Next, the potential of the control strategy for the control of suspension bridges with active stay cables is evaluated on a numerical model of an existing footbridge; several configurations are investigated where the active cables connect the pylon to the deck or the deck to the catenary. The analysis confirms that it is possible to provide a set of targeted modes with a considerable amount of damping, reaching ${\xi}=15%$. Finally, the control strategy is demonstrated experimentally on a laboratory mock-up equipped with four control stay cables equipped with piezoelectric actuators. The experimental results confirm the excellent performance and robustness of the control system and the very good agreement with the predictions.

• 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.