Design, performance test and analysis on magnetorheological damper for earthquake mitigation

摘要

As a semi-active control device, magnetorheological (MR) dampers have been paid more attention because of theirnhigh controllability, fast response and low power requirement. When MR dampers are used for vibration mitigation,nsome challenge topics must be taken into account, such as design method, performance study and intelligent controlnalgorithm. In this paper, a detailed design process of MR damper involving the geometry design and magnetic circuitndesign is carried out, and a multistage shear-valve mode MR damper is designed and manufactured. Then the MRndamper is tested to investigate the influence of control current, displacement amplitude and excitation frequency onnthe damper’s mechanical behavior and energy dissipation performance. At the same time, the design target valuesnare compared with experimental results. Comparison results show that the proposed design method holds promisenin designing and optimizing the MR damper. Finally, a modified Sigmoid model is proposed. Comparison resultsnbetween the experimental data and the numerical data indicate that the modified Sigmoid model can accuratelyndescribe the behaviors of the MR damper. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.