Large-scale smart passive system for civil engineering applications

Abstract

The smart passive system consisting of a magnetorheological (MR) damper and an electromagnetic induction (EMI) part has been recently proposed. An EMI part can generate the input current for an MR damper from vibration of a structure according to Faraday's law of electromagnetic induction. The control performance of the smart passive system has been demonstrated mainly by numerical simulations. It was verified from the numerical results that the system could be effective to reduce the structural responses in the cases of civil engineering structures such as buildings and bridges. On the other hand, the experimental validation of the system is not sufficiently conducted yet. In this paper, the feasibility of the smart passive system to real-scale structures is investigated. To do this, the large-scale smart passive system is designed, manufactured, and tested. The system consists of the large-capacity MR damper, which has a maximum force level of approximately ±10,000N, a maximum stroke level of ±35mm and the maximum current level of 3 A, and the large-scale EMI part, which is designed to generate sufficient induced current for the damper. The applicability of the smart passive system to large real-scale structures is examined through a series of shaking table tests. The magnitudes of the induced current of the EMI part with various sinusoidal excitation inputs are measured. According to the test results, the large-scale EMI part shows the possibility that it could generate the sufficient current or power for changing the damping characteristics of the large-capacity MR damper.