Experimental study on semi-active control of frame-shear wall eccentric structure using MR dampers

Abstract

Magnetorheological (MR) damper is a kind of intelligent actuator, which shows immense potential in the field of structural vibration control. The construction and mechanical behavior of MR damper are introduced firstly, and then a new mechanical model--double sigmoid model is proposed based on the experimental study of MR damper. The simulation system of the 3-floor frame-shear wall eccentric structure with MR dampers was built according to the coupled translation and torsion response control using MR damper, based on Matlab/Simulink software environment and hardware/software resources of dSPACE. The shaking table experiment of the structural model was implemented by using rapid control prototyping (RCP) technology. The validity of two passive control strategies and one semi-active control strategy is verified under three input earthquake excitation with different peak value. The experimental results show that the coupled translation and torsion response is significantly mitigated, and the semi-active control strategies can achieve higher performance levels as compared to those of the two passive control cases. Moreover, the location of the MR damper has an important effect on the control results.