Enhance the damping density of eddy current and electromagnetic dampers

Abstract

Over the past decades, a great variety of dampers have been developed and applied to mechanical, aerospace, and civil structures to control structural vibrations. This study is focused on two emerging damper types, namely, eddy current dampers (ECDs) and electromagnetic damper (EMDs), both of which are regarded as promising alternatives to commonly-applied viscous fluid dampers (VFDs) because of their similar mechanical behavior. This study aims to enhance the damping densities of ECDs and EMDs, which are typically lower than those of VFDs, by proposing new designs with multiple improvement measures. The design configurations, mechanisms, and experimental results of the new ECDs and EMDs are presented in this paper. The further comparison based on the experimental results revealed that the damping densities of the proposed ECD and EMD designs are comparable to those of market-available VFDs. Considering ECDs and EMDs are solid-state dampers without fluid leakage problems, the results obtained in this study demonstrate a great prospect of replacing conventional VFDs with the improved ECDs and EMDs in future large-scale applications.