• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.339-355
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• 2006

A procedure to retrofit existing essential facilities subjected to seismic excitation is proposed. The main features of this procedure are to reduce maximum acceleration and associated forces in buildings subjected to seismic excitation by reducing their strength (weakening). The weakening retrofit, which is an opposite strategy to strengthening, is particularly suitable for buildings having overstressed components and foundation supports or having weak brittle components. However, by weakening the structure large deformations are expected. Supplementaldamping devices however can control the deformations within desirable limits. The structure retrofitted with this strategy will have, therefore, a reduction in the acceleration response and a reduction in the deformations, depending on the amount of additional damping introduced in the structure. An illustration of the above strategy is presented here through an evaluation of the inelastic response of the structure through a nonlinear dynamic analysis. The results are compared with different retrofit techniques. A parametric analysis has also been carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of the retrofitting method using different combination of the performance thresholds in accelerations and displacements through fragility analysis.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.359-371
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• 2018

Strong seismic events commonly cause large drift and deformation, and functionality failures in the superstructures. One way to prevent functionality failures is to design structures which are ductile and flexible through yielding when subjected to strong ground excitations. By developing forces that assist motion as "negative stiffness forces", yielding can be achieved. In this paper, we adopt the weakening and damping method to achieve a new approach to reduce all of the structural responses by further adjusting damping phase. A semi-active control system is adopted to perform the experiments. In this adaptation, negative stiffness forces through certain devices are used in weakening phase to reduce structural strength. Magneto-rheological (MR) dampers are then added to preserve stability of the structure. To adjust the voltage in MR dampers, an inverse model is employed in the control system to command MR dampers and generate the desired control forces, where a velocity control algorithm produces initial required control force. An extensive numerical study is conducted to evaluate proposed methodology by using the smart base-isolated benchmark building. Totally, nine control systems are examined to study proposed strategy. Based on the numerical results of seven earthquakes, the use of proposed strategy not only reduces base displacements, base accelerations and base shear but also leads to reduction of accelerations and inter story drifts of the superstructure. Numerical results shows that the usage of inverse model produces the desired regulated damping, thus improving the stability of the structure.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.609-618
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• 2018

A new mechanical model for predicting the vibration of a pipe pile embedded in longitudinally layered visco-elastic media with radial inhomogeneity is proposed by extending Novak's plain-strain model and complex stiffness method to consider viscous-type damping. The analytical solutions for the dynamic impedance, the velocity admittance and the reflected signal of wave velocity at the pile head are also derived and subsequently verified by comparison with existing solutions. An extensive parametric analysis is further performed to examine the effects of shear modulus, viscous damping coefficient, coefficient of disturbance degree, weakening or strengthening range of surrounding soil and longitudinal soft or hard interbedded layer on the velocity admittance and the reflected signal of wave velocity at the pile head. It is demonstrated that the proposed model and the obtained solutions provide extensive possibilities for practical application compared with previous related studies.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.627-643
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• 2015

Negative stiffness, previously emulated by active or semi-active control for cable vibration mitigation, is realized passively using a self-contained highly compressed spring, the negative stiffness device (NSD).The NSD installed in parallel with a viscous damper (VD) in the vicinity of cable anchorage, enables increment of damper deformation during cable vibrations and hence increases the attainable cable damping. Considering the small cable displacement at the damper location, even with the weakening device, the force provided by the NSD-VD assembly is approximately linear. Complex frequency analysis has thus been conducted to evaluate the damping effect of the assembly on the cable; the displacement-dependent negative stiffness is further accounted by numerical analysis, validating the accuracy of the linear approximation for practical ranges of cable and NSD configurations. The NSD is confirmed to be a practical and cost-effective solution to improve the modal damping of a cable provided by an external damper, especially for super-long cables where the damper location is particularly limited. Moreover, mathematically, a linear negative stiffness and viscous damping assembly has proven capability to represent active or semi-active control for simplified cable vibration analysis as reported in the literature, while in these studies only the assembly located near cable anchorage has been addressed. It is of considerable interest to understand the general characteristics of a cable with the assembly relieving the location restriction, since it is quite practical to have an active controller installed at arbitrary location along the cable span such as by hanging an active tuned mass damper. In this paper the cable frequency variations and damping evolutions with respect to the arbitrary assembly location are then evaluated and compared to those of a taut cable with a viscous damper at arbitrary location, and novel frequency shifts are observed. The characterized complex frequencies presented in this paper can be used for preliminary damping effect evaluation of an adaptive passive or semi-active or active device for cable vibration control.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.40-46
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• 2011

This paper is to investigate the effects of the asymmetrical support stiffness on the stability of a supercritical driveshaft with asymmetrical shaft stiffness and anisotropic bearings. The equations of motion is derived for a system including a rigid disk, a massless flexible asymmetric shaft, anisotropic bearings and a support beam. The Floquet theory is applied to perform the stability analysis with the variation of the support stiffness, the shaft asymmetry, the shaft damping and the shaft speed. The results show that the asymmetric support stiffness is closely related to the stability caused by primary resonance as well as the supercritical operation. First, the stiffness variation can stabilize the system around primary resonance by weakening the parametric resonance from the shaft asymmetry. Second, it also improve the stability characteristics at a supercritical operation when the support stiffness is not so high relative to the shaft stiffness.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.723-735
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• 2018

Linear proportional-integral (PI) controllers are an attractive choice for controlling the speed of induction machines because of their simplicity and ease of implementation. Fractional-order PI (FO-PI) controllers, however, perform better than PI controllers because of their nonlinear nature and the underlying iso-damping property of fractional-order operators. In this work, an FO-PI controller based on the proposed first-order plus dead-time induction motor model and integer-order (IO) controllers, such as Ziegler-Nichols PI, Cohen-Coon PI, and a PI controller tuned via trial-and-error method, is designed. Simulation and experimental investigation on an indirect field-oriented induction motor drive system proves that the proposed FO-PI controller has better speed tracking, lesser settling time, better disturbance rejection, and lower speed tracking error compared with linear IO-PI controllers. Our experimental study also validates that the FO-PI controller maximizes the torque per ampere output of the induction machine and can effectively control the motor at low speed, in field-weakening regions, and under detuned conditions.