Vibration mitigation of highway isolated bridge using MR damper-based smart passive control system employing an electromagnetic induction part

Abstract

In this paper, the design and performance verification of a magnetorheological (i.e. MR) damper‐based smart passive control system employing an electromagnetic induction (i.e. EMI) system has been investigated for the benchmark highway bridge model subjected to various historic earthquakes. The smart passive control system is based on an MR damper‐based control system without feedback control and power supply parts. Instead, these parts are replaced by an EMI system consisting of a permanent magnet and a coil, which produces electrical energy (i.e. induced current) proportional to the rate of the change of the movement of an MR damper according to the Faraday's law of electromagnetic induction. This smart passive control system is implemented to verify the effectiveness for seismic protection of benchmark problem for the seismically excited highway bridge. The numerical simulation results show that the smart passive control system has the slightly better performance to the passive‐optimal control system. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.