Kang-Min Choi

Feasibility study of an MR damper-based smart passive control system employing an electromagnetic induction device

The feasibility of a newly developed smart passive control system equipped electromagnetic induction device is experimentally investigated. An electromagnetic induction device consists of a permanent magnet and a solenoid, which produces electrical energy (i.e. induced current) according to Faradays law of electromagnetic induction. The produced energy is applied to the magnetorheological (i.e. MR) damper to change the damping characteristics by itself without any controller or corresponding sensors for reducing structural responses. Recently, the smart passive control system was conceptually and numerically introduced without consideration of its practical applicability. This paper describes the design of an electromagnetic inductive device which is composed of a permanent magnet and a solenoid, and experiments with the MR damper-based smart passive control system on a shaking table which produces various sinusoidal and random excitations. The experimental results demonstrate that it is feasible to apply the smart passive control system equipped electromagnetic induction device for changing the damping characteristics of an MR damper.

Application of Smart Passive Damping System Using MR Damper to Highway Bridge Structure

Magnetorheological (i.e., MR) dampers are one of the most prospective semiactive control devices for civil engineering applications to earthquake hazard mitigation, because they have many advantages such as small power requirement, reliability, and low price to manufacture. A smart passive system based on an MR damper system without including a power supply, controller, and sensors consists of an MR damper and an electromagnetic induction (i.e., EMI) system that uses a permanent magnet and a coil. The electromotive force induced by movement of a structure can control MR damper effectively without any external power supply and control algorithm. This smart passive control system is implemented to verify the effectiveness for seismic protection of benchmark structural control problem for the seismically excited highway bridge, which is based on the newly constructed 91/5 highway over-crossing in Southern California. The results of the numerical simulations show that the presented control system can be beneficial in reducing seismic responses of benchmark bridge structure.

Performance Evaluation of a Large-scale MR Damper for Controlling Seismic Responses Using a Real-time Hybrid Test Method

This paper presents real-time hybrid test method of large-scale MR damper applied to a building structure under seismic excitation. The real-time hybrid test using an actuator for the control performance evaluation of a MR damper controlling the response of earthquake-excited building structure is experimentally implemented. In the test, the building structure is used as a numerical part, on which a large-scale MR damper adopted as an experimental part was installed to reduce its response. At first, the force that is acting between a MR damper and building structure is measured from the load cell attached on the actuator system and is fed-back to the computer to control the motion of the actuator. Then, the actuator is so driven that the error between the interface displacement computed from the numerical building structure with the excitations of earthquake and the fed-back interface force and that measured from the actuator. The control efficiency of the MR damper used in this paper is experimentally confirmed by implementing this process of experiment on real-time.

MR damper-based smart passive control system for seismic protection of building structures

This paper investigates the feasibility and efficacy of an MR damper-based control system introducing an electromagnetic induction (EMI) part, for suppressing vibration of building structures subjected to seismic loadings. In the proposed control system, the EMI part composed of a permanent magnet and a coil converts the kinetic energy of the relative motion between a building and a damper into the electric energy, which is used for a change in damping characteristics of the MR damper. Since the EMI part can be used as a controller, which determines the command voltage input according to structural responses, as well as a power source, the proposed control system can be much more compact, convenient, and economic than a conventional active/semiactive system that needs a power supply, a controller and sensors. To verify the feasibility and efficacy of the proposed control system, a shaking table test of a small-scale building model employing the MR damper with the EMI part is conducted. The performance of the proposed control system is compared with that of conventional semiactive control systems using an MR damper.

Seismic Performance Improvement of Base Isolated Buildings using Smart Passive Control System

In this study, the efficacy of the newly developed smart passive control system to improve seismic performance of base isolated building structures is numerically verified. The smart passive control system consists of a magnetorheological (MR) damper and an electromagnetic induction (EMI) part. The damping characteristics of an MR damper can be controlled by the current generated in an EMI part according to the Faraday`s law of electromagnetic induction. An EMI part consisting of a permanent magnet and a solenoid coil could substitute a control system including sensors, a controller and an external power supply in a conventional smart control system. The benchmark control problem for a base isolated building presented by the american society of civil engineers is considered for numerical simulation. The control performance of the smart passive control system is compared to that of the conventional smart control system using MR dampers. It is demonstrated from the numerical simulation results that the smart passive control system is useful to improve the seismic performance of base isolated buildings.