• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.611-623
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• 2010

Excessive stay cable vibrations can cause severe problems for cable-stayed bridges. In this paper a semiactive Magnetorheological (MR) damper is investigated to reduce cable vibrations. The control-oriented cable-damper model is first established; a computer simulation for the cable-damper system is carried out; and finally a MR damper is experimentally used to reduce the cable vibration in a laboratory environment using a semiactive control algorithm. Both the simulation and experimental results show that the semiactive MR damper achieves better control results than the corresponding passive damper.

• 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.

• Journal of Power System Engineering
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.19-24
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• 2011

In this study, a control method of MR(magneto-rheological) damper for a cruise bus is investigated. A virtual dynamic damper and a sky-hook algorithm are employed to control the damping characteristics of MR damper. Coefficients for a virtual dynamic damper are determined through the parameter identification. A quarter car model of a cruise bus is established by using ADAMS/Car program for the computer simulation. Sine wave excitation and random excitation are used to compare the controlled MR damper with the passive damper. From the simulation results, the performance of MR damper with a virtual dynamic damper is better than that of the passive damper.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2006.03a
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• pp.511-518
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• 2006

In this study, seismic response mitigation effect of an MR damper generating response-dependent frictional force is investigated. It has been reported in previous studies that passively operated MR damper with constant input current doesn't show better control performance than semi-active MR damper with varying input current calculated by control algorithms such as linear quadratic regulator and sliding mode control. However, in order to operate the MR damper semi-actively, other control systems besides the damper itself such as sensors for measuring structural responses and controller for calculating optimal input current are necessary, which deteriorate the economical efficiency. This study presents a MR damper generating frictional force of which magnitude is controlled in accordance to the displacement and velocity transferred to the damper. Numerical analyses results indicate that the performance of the response dependent MR damper is closely related with the range of the friction force and it can be designed to short better control performance than the passive MR damper.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2006.03a
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• pp.645-650
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• 2006

This paper presents the results of a study to verify the sufficient control performance of semiactive tuned mass damper and to identify suitable control methods for semiactive tuned mass damper in structural vibration control. In this study, four control algorithms are considered: on-off displacement based groundhook, on-off velocity based groundhook, clipped optimal and maximum energy dissipation algorithm. For semiactive tuned mass damper, MR damper is considered as a controllable damping device and the command voltage is calculated by the control algorithms. Each of the control theory is applied to the three story shear building excited by three earthquakes. The performance of each algorithm is compared with that of conventional tuned mass damper system using evaluation criteria. The simulation results indicate that semiactive tuned mass damper has control efficiency. Among the control algorithms, on-off displacement based control theory shows the best efficacy and robustness.

• 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.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.26-31
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• 1998

For the semiactive vibration control, a variable damper and proper control systems are essential. In this research, a controllable damper was designed using the MR fluids and its mechanical properties such as damping constant and response time were measured. Since the response time of the MR damper was much longer than nominal MR fluid response time, the time delay of the damper should be considered in the design of controllers. It is shown that the advanced On/Off vibration control which includes the damper time delay performs more effectively than the conventional one.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.479-487
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• 2017

Frictional dampers are used in structural engineering as means of passive control. Meanwhile, frictional damper shave a disadvantage compared to viscous rivals since the slippage force must be exceeded to activate the device, and cannot be ideal full range of possible events. The concept of semi-active control is utilized to overcome this shortcoming. In this paper, a new semi-active frictional damper called Smart Adjustable Frictional (SAF) damper is introduced. SAF damper consists of hydraulic, electronic units and sensors which are all linked with an active control discipline. SAF acts as a smart damper which can adapt its slippage threshold during a dynamic excitation by measuring and controlling the structural response. The novelty of this damper is, while it controls the response of the structure in real time with acceptable time delay. The paper also reports on the results of a series of experiments which have been performed on SAF dampers to obtain their prescribed hysteretic behavior for various control algorithms. The results show that SAF can produce the desired slippage load of various algorithms in real time. Numerical models incorporating control simulations are also made to obtain the hysteretic response of the system which agrees closely with test results.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.521-536
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• 2019

Using magnetorheological (MR) dampers in multiswitch open-loop control mode has been shown to be cost-effective for cable vibration mitigation. In this paper, a method for analyzing the damping performance of taut cables incorporating MR dampers in open-loop control mode is developed considering the effects of damping coefficient, damper stiffness, damper mass, and stiffness of the damper support. Making use of a three-element model of MR dampers and complex modal analysis, both numerical and asymptotic solutions are obtained. An analytical expression is obtained from the asymptotic solution to evaluate the equivalent damping ratio of the cable-damper system in the open-loop control mode. The individual and combined effects of the damping coefficient, damper stiffness, damper mass and stiffness of damper support on vibration control effectiveness are investigated in detail. The main thrust of the present study is to derive a general formula explicitly relating the normalized system damping ratio and the normalized damper parameters in consideration of all concerned effects, which can be easily used for the design of MR dampers to achieve optimal open-loop vibration control of taut cables.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.163-169
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• 2016

In the case where a MR-damper is employed for vibration control, it is important to decide on how much control capacity should be assigned to it against structural capacities (strength and load, etc). This paper aims to present a MR-damper's control capacity suitable for the capacities of the structure which needs to be controlled. First, a two span bridge was built equipped with a MR-damper, which constitutes a two-span MR-damper control system. Then, inflicting an earthquake load on the system, a basic experiment was performed for vibration control, and a simulation was also carried out reflecting specific control conditions such as MR-damper and rubber bearing. The comparison of the results against each other proved their validity. Then, in order to calculate an optimal control capacity of the MR-damper, structural capacity was divided into eleven cases in total and simulated. For each case, an additional load of 30 KN was inflicted everytime, thereby increasingly strengthening structural capacity. As a result of the study, it was found that the control capacity of MR-damper of 30 KN was safely secured only with lumped mass of more than 150 KN(case 6). Therefore, it is concluded the MR-damper showed the best performance of control when it exerted its capacity at around 20% of structural capacity.