Theoretical Implementation and Experimental Verification of Zero-Power Force Control Mechanism

摘要

Earthquake disasters are inevitable, and in recent years, major earthquakes have caused great losses of life and property. Toprevent such losses, structures must have sufficient earthquake resistance to preserve the lives of the occupants. Structuralcontrol can improve the shock resistance of structures, the actuator is the key issue of the control system. A new prototypeof actuator, a neutral equilibrium mechanism (NEM), is proposed in this study. It automatically recovers the energy of thestiffened component of structure. The internal force and energy of the stiffened component can be fully balanced under idealconditions, namely, no friction force and precise control by this proposed NEM. A NEM can operate with a small amountof energy, requiring only a miniature servo actuator. A prototype of a NEM is verified in experiment. (1) The experimentalcomponents of the basic machine test include the following: body friction of the NEM, connecting rod friction, main springelastic constant, balance spring elastic constant and zero correction. (2) Performance verification of theNEM:The experimentalmethod verifies that the body and the connecting rod have little friction and find the elastic constants of the main spring andbalance spring, and the value of zeroing calibration. (3) Efficiency validation of a NEM displays that the little unbalancedforce can be provided by a NEM to balance large force, generated by the control mechanism. The magnification factor of thisproposed NEM is more than 200. Test results demonstrate that a NEM can achieve a large energy-saving effect without beingtime-consuming, so the power demand of a NEM can be greatly reduced when applied to structural control.