The study of frictional damper with various control algorithms

Abstract

Frictional dampers are used in structural engineering as means of passive control. Meanwhile, frictional damper shave a disadvantage compared to viscous rivals since the slippage force must be exceeded to activate the device, and cannot be ideal full range of possible events. The concept of semi-active control is utilized to overcome this shortcoming. In this paper, a new semi-active frictional damper called Smart Adjustable Frictional (SAF) damper is introduced. SAF damper consists of hydraulic, electronic units and sensors which are all linked with an active control discipline. SAF acts as a smart damper which can adapt its slippage threshold during a dynamic excitation by measuring and controlling the structural response. The novelty of this damper is, while it controls the response of the structure in real time with acceptable time delay. The paper also reports on the results of a series of experiments which have been performed on SAF dampers to obtain their prescribed hysteretic behavior for various control algorithms. The results show that SAF can produce the desired slippage load of various algorithms in real time. Numerical models incorporating control simulations are also made to obtain the hysteretic response of the system which agrees closely with test results.