Semi-active control on long-span reticulated steel structures using MR dampers under multi-dimensional earthquake excitations

This paper focuses on the vibration control of long-span reticulated steel structures under multidimensional earthquake excitation. The control system and strategy are constructed based on Magneto-Rheological (MR) dampers. The LQR and Hrovat controlling algorithm is adopted to detemine optimal MR damping force, while the modified Bingham model (MBM) and inverse neural network (INN) is proposed to solve the real-time controlling current. Three typical long-span reticulated structural systems are detailedly analyzed, including the double-layer cylindrical reticulated shell, single-layer spherical reticulated shell, and cable suspended arch-truss structure. Results show that the proposed control strategy can reduce the displacement and acceleration effectively for three typical structural systems. The displacement control effect under the earthquake excitation with different PGA is similar, while for the cable suspended arch-truss, the acceleration control effect increase distinctly with the earthquake excitation intensity. Moreover, for the cable suspended arch-truss, the strand stress variation can also be effectively reduced by the MR dampers, which is very important for this kind of structure to ensure that the cable would not be destroyed or relaxed.