Identification and Semiactive Control of Smart Structures Equipped with Magnetorheological Actuators

This paper deals with the problem of identification and semiactive control of smart structures subject to unknown external disturbances such as earthquake, wind, etc. The experimental setup used is a 6-story test structure equipped with shear-mode semiactive magnetorheological actuators being installed in WUSCEEL. The experimental results obtained have verified the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm

Hysteretic active control of base-isolated buildings

In this work, an active control law for base-isolated buildings is proposed. The crucial idea comes from the observation that passive base-isolation systems are hysteretic. Thus, an hysteretic active control strategy is designed in a way that the control force is smooth and limited by a prescribed bound. Furthermore, given a specific actuator with a physically limited maximum force and maximum rate of change, it is proven that the design parameters in the contributed control law can be chosen such that the control signal inherently satisfies the actuator constraints. Eight different ground-acceleration time-history records and a model of a 5-story building are used to study and compare the performance of a passive pure friction damper alone, with the addition of the proposed active control. Numerical analysis demonstrates that our control strategy effectively mitigates base displacement and shear without an increase in superstructure drift or acceleration.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A velocity-based seismic control for base-isolated building structures

Passive, active and semi-active control have been extensively considered to improve the protection of base-isolated structures against earthquakes. This paper presents a strategy to apply control forces to the base of an isolated structure to enhance the performance of purely passive devices. The main feature is the simplicity in formulation, design and implementation. It is formulated as a static nonlinear function depending only on the base velocity. This function ensures energy dissipation capability with always bounded control force. The control is applied to a three-dimensional benchmark problem which is used by the structural control community as a state-of-the-art model for numerical experiments of seismic control attenuation. Several performance indices show that the proposed controller is efficient with a reasonable control effort.Postprint (published version

State of the art of control schemes for smart systems featuring magneto-rheological materials

This review presents various control strategies for application systems utilizing smart magneto-rheological fluid (MRF) and magneto-rheological elastomers (MRE). It is well known that both MRF and MRE are actively studied and applied to many practical systems such as vehicle dampers. The mandatory requirements for successful applications of MRF and MRE include several factors: advanced material properties, optimal mechanisms, suitable modeling, and appropriate control schemes. Among these requirements, the use of an appropriate control scheme is a crucial factor since it is the final action stage of the application systems to achieve the desired output responses. There are numerous different control strategies which have been applied to many different application systems of MRF and MRE, summarized in this review. In the literature review, advantages and disadvantages of each control scheme are discussed so that potential researchers can develop more effective strategies to achieve higher control performance of many application systems utilizing magneto-rheological materials

Accelerated Controller Tuning for Wind Turbines Under Multiple Hazards

During their lifecycle, wind turbines can be subjected to multiple hazard loads, such as high-intensity wind, earthquake, wave, and mechanical unbalance. Excessive vibrations, due to these loads, can have detrimental effects on energy production, structural lifecycle, and the initial cost of wind turbines. Vibration control by various means, such as passive, active, and semi-active control systems provide crucial solutions to these issues. We developed a novel control theory that enables semi-active controller tuning under the complex structural behavior and inherent system nonlinearity. The proposed theory enables the evaluation of semi-active controllers’ performance of multi-degrees-of-freedom systems, without the need for time-consuming simulations. A wide range of controllers can be tested in a fraction of a second, and their parameters can be tuned to achieve system-level performance for different optimization objectives

Semi-active control of base-isolated structures using a new inverse model of MR dampers

Magnetorheological (MR) dampers have received special attention as semi-active devices for mitigation of structural vibrations. Because of the inherent nonlinearity of these devices, it is difcult to obtain a reasonable mathematical inverse model. This paper is concerned with two related concepts. On one hand, it presents a new inverse model of MR dampers based on the normalized Bouc-Wen model. On the other hand, it considers a hybrid seismic control system for building structures, which combines a class of passive nonlinear base isolator with a semi-active control system. In this application, the MR damper is used as a semi-active device in which the voltage is updated by a feedback control loop.The management of MR dampers is performed in a hierarchical way according to the desired control force, the actual force of the dampers and its capacity to react. The control is applied to a numerical three-dimensional benchmark problem which is used by the structural control community as a state-of-the-art model for numerical experiments of seismic control attenuation. The performance indices show that the proposed semi-active controller behaves satisfactorily.Postprint (published version

Passive, semi-active, active and hybrid mass dampers: A literature review with associated applications on building-like structures

In this paper, a state-of-the-art literature review is presented emphasising on the development of control variants for mass damper schemes on building-like structures. Additionally, a systematic literature review is conducted addressing three relevant questions: What type of mass damper is preferable by the associated industry? How are mass dampers distributed around the world? Is industry following research? Through the systematic literature review, updated lists of mass damper implementations and control algorithm applications in real-life structures were compiled. 208 case-studies are discussed in total. It is found that, 63% of them refer to passive tuned mass dampers, 31% to hybrid mass dampers, 4.0% to active mass dampers and only 2% to semi-active mass dampers. Regarding control algorithms, controllers of 24 structures driving semi-active, active or hybrid mass dampers are presented. It is concluded that the industry considerably lags behind latest structural control research both regarding implementations and overall management

Control of base-isolated systems using force feedback

Postprint (published version

Force-derivative feedback semi-active control of base-isolated buildings using large-scale MR fluid dampers

Postprint (published version