Structural Control Effect and Performance of Structure Under Control of Impulse Semi-active Mass Control Mechanism

Abstract

In this article, a new semi-active damper is proposed to reduce the structural displacement and the maximum roof displacement responses of buildings under dynamical excitation. The main feature of such a semi-active mass damper is that it has a high natural frequency relative to conventional mass dampers and that it will only perform negative work on the structure based on the direction of motion of the structure and the control mass. This proposed damper contains a coupling mechanism that uses a small amount of driving force to change the “release” and “capture” states between the control mass and the structure. A mathematical model and the control logic of this proposed method are derived and discussed to compare the structural responses of the structure under various control parameters. Then, a parameter study is conducted to discuss the optimal design parameters for this proposed mass damper. The optimal design parameters for this proposed mass damper are as follows: frequency ratio around 4 with a mass ratio around 0.04–0.06, and suitable mass distribution at each floor. This proposed mass damper achieves constructive shock absorption effects to reduce structural displacement and maximum roof displacement.