Comparative Study on Vibration Control of a Scaled Bridge Using Fail-Safe Magneto-Rheological Fluid Dampers

Abstract

This work presents vibration control of a scaled bridge using fail-safe magneto-rheological fluid (MRF) dampers. A fail-safe MRF damper refers to a device that retains a minimum required damping capacity in the event of a power or electronic system failure. Energy minimization, Lyapunov, fuzzy logic, and variable structure system (VSS) fuzzy logic control strategies are employed to study the performance of this system under a random base excitation. To better understand the overall system behavior, a theoretical frequency response analysis is also presented. It is experimentally demonstrated that semiactive control systems utilizing MRF dampers can reduce the relative deck displacement while the absolute deck acceleration is relatively unaffected. In addition, it is shown that the fuzzy logic and VSS fuzzy logic methods are simple to implement, effective and require far less input energy than other control cases.