Vibration Control of Buildings Using Magnetorheological Damper: A New Control Algorithm

This paper presents vibration control of a building model under earthquake loads. A magnetorheological (MR) damper is placed in the building between the first floor and ground for seismic response reduction. A new control algorithm to command the MR damper is proposed. The approach is inspired by a quasi-bang-bang controller; however, the proposed technique gives weights to control commands in a fashion that is similar to a fuzzy logic controller. Several control algorithms including decentralized bang-bang controller, Lyapunov controller, modulated homogeneous friction controller, maximum energy dissipation controller, and clipped-optimal controller are used for comparison. The new controller achieved the best reduction in maximum interstory drifts and maximum absolute accelerations over all the control algorithms presented. This reveals that the proposed controller with the MR damper is promising and may provide the best protection to the building and its contents.