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As semi-active electro-mechanical control devices increase in scale for use in real-world civil engineering applications, their dynamics become increasingly complicated. Control designs that are able to take these characteristics into account will be more effective in achieving good performance. Large-scale magnetorheological (MR) dampers exhibit a significant time lag in their force–response to voltage inputs, reducing the efficacy of typical controllers designed for smaller scale devices where the lag is negligible. A new control algorithm is presented for large-scale MR devices that uses over-driving and back-driving of the commands to overcome the challenges associated with the dynamics of these large-scale MR dampers. An illustrative numerical example is considered to demonstrate the controller performance. Via simulations of the structure using several seismic ground motions, the merits of the proposed control strategy to achieve reductions in various response parameters are examined and compared against several accepted control algorithms. Experimental evidence is provided to validate the improved capabilities of the proposed controller in achieving the desired control force levels. Through real-time hybrid simulation (RTHS), the proposed controllers are also examined and experimentally evaluated in terms of their efficacy and robust performance. The results demonstrate that the proposed control strategy has superior performance over typical control algorithms when paired with a large-scale MR damper, and is robust for structural control applications.

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