Jeongsu Park

Investigation of Applicability of Electromagnetic Energy Harvesting System to Inclined Stay Cable Under Wind Load

An electromagnetic energy harvesting system that involves the use of wind-induced vibrations of an inclined stay cable is proposed for powering a wireless sensor node installed on a cable, which is important for monitoring the integrity of a cable-stayed bridge. The proposed system is developed by introducing the rotational mechanism of a rigid bar having a moving mass pivoted on a hinged point with a power spring, so that it can be successfully operated on an inclined cable. The performance of the proposed energy harvesting system is validated using its prototype by performing a shaking table test and a field test on an in-service cable-stayed bridge. In addition, strategies for improving the performance of the proposed system are discussed in detail, and the applicability of the system is investigated on the basis of these performance improvement strategies.

Experimental valitation of energy harvesting device for civil engineering applications

In the field of structural health monitoring using wireless sensors, considerable research attention has been recently given to vibration-based energy harvesting devices for exploring their feasibility as a power source of a wireless sensor node. Most of the previous studies have focused on lab-scale tests for performance validation. For real application, however, field tests on developed energy harvesting devices should be conducted, because their performance may be considerably affected by change in the testing environment. In this study, a new electromagnetic energy harvester is proposed, which is more suitable for civil engineering application, and the preliminary field test on a real cable-stayed bridge are conducted to validate its effectiveness.

Performance enhancement of piezoelectric energy harvesting system using a corrugated cantilever beam

In this paper, a piezoelectric energy harvesting device consisting of a proof mass and a corrugated cantilever beam is proposed in order to enhance its performance (i.e., an increase in output voltage as well as a reduction in resonant frequency). The sinusoidal or trapezoidal shape of a cantilever beam is able to make the bonding area of piezoelectric materials (e.g., polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) film) much larger, resulting in higher output voltages. Moreover, the natural frequency of the device can be significantly decreased due to low flexural rigidity of the beam member. This lownatural frequency device would fit well for civil engineering applications because most civil structures such as bridges and buildings have low natural frequencies. In order to examine the geometrical characteristics of the proposed device, an analytical development and a numerical simulation are carried out. Besides, shaking table tests are conducted with a prototype of energy harvesting device. It is demonstrated from numerical and experimental studies that the proposed energy harvester can shift down its resonant frequency considerably and generate much higher output power as compared with a conventional one having a flat (or straight) cantilever beam.

Active mass damper system employing time delay control algorithm for vibration mitigation of building structure

The feasibility of an active mass damper (AMD) system employing the time delay control (TDC) algorithm, which is one of the robust and adaptive control algorithms, for effectively suppressing the wind-induced vibration of a building structure is investigated. The TDC algorithm has several attractive features such as the simplicity and the excellent robustness to unknown system dynamics and disturbance. Based on the characteristics of the algorithm, it has the potential to be an effective control system for mitigating excessive vibration of civil engineering structures such as buildings, bridges and towers. However, it has not been used for structural response reduction yet. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed active control method combining an AMD system with the TDC algorithm, a series of labscale tests are carried out.

A Vision-based Displacement Measurement Method for Structural Health Monitoring of Large-scale Infrastructures

Summary A vision-based displacement measurement method for structural health monitoring of large-scale infrastructures such as high-rise buildings and long-span bridges is presented. The method uses digital image processing techniques including a target recognition algorithm, projection of the captured image, and calculation of the actual displacement using target geometry and the number of pixels moved. To measure the displacement of a flexible structure from a distant location which can be regarded as a fixed reference point, a novel image processing method has been devised by means of successive estimation of relative displacement and rotational angle using a synchronized vision-based system. By measuring the same target with two independent cameras placed in a line, a redundant displacement value is obtained and can be utilized for calculating the rotational angle at the intermediate camera position. The effectiveness of the method has been validated through field tests of a full-scale five-story building frame structure. Acknowledgement

Dynamic Analysis of a Smart Base-Isolation System Based on MR Elastomers

This paper presents a numerical investigation of a smart base isolation system employing magneto-rheological (MR) elastomers or an MR elastomer-based base isolation system. MR elastomers are a new class of smart materials whose elastic modulus or stiffness can be adjusted depending on the magnitude of the applied magnetic field. Hence, they can be used as controllable stiffness elements in engineering systems. The primary goal of this study is to investigate the dynamic performance of the smart base-isolation in mitigating excessive vibrations of a building structure under earthquake loadings. To this end, a five-story shear building model coupled with a smart base-isolation is developed. Using this model, a series of numerical simulations is performed to evaluate the effectiveness of the MR elastomer-based base isolation system under several historic seismic excitations. The results show that the proposed base isolation system outperform the conventional passive-type base isolation system in reducing the responses of the building structure for all seismic excitations considered in this study.© 2010 ASME