Smart passive system based on magnetorheological damper

Magnetorheological (MR) dampers are one of the most promising control devices for civil engineering applications to earthquake hazard mitigation, because they have many advantages such as small power requirement, reliability, and low price to manufacture. To reduce the responses of the controlled structure by using MR dampers, a control system including a power supply, controller, and sensors is needed. However, when a lot of MR dampers are applied to large-scale civil structures, such as cable-stayed bridges and high-rise buildings, the control system becomes complex. Thus, it is not easy to install and to maintain the MR damper-based control system. In this paper, to resolve the above difficulties, a smart passive system is proposed, which is based on an MR damper system. The smart passive system consists of an MR damper and an electromagnetic induction (EMI) system that uses a permanent magnet and a coil. According to the Faraday law of induction, the EMI system that is attached to the MR damper produces electric energy. The produced energy is applied to the MR damper to vary the damping characteristics of the damper. Thus, the smart passive system does not require any power at all. Furthermore, the output of electric energy is proportional to input loads such as earthquakes, which means the smart passive system has adaptability by itself without any controller or corresponding sensors. Therefore, it is easy to build up and maintain the proposed smart passive system. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed smart passive system, the performance is compared with that of the normal MR damper-based control system. The numerical results show that the smart passive system has comparable performance to the normal MR damper-based control system.