This paper describes the new concept of a semi-active tuned mass damper with magnetorheological damper (MR-STMD). The real-time controlled MR damper force emulates controlled damping and a superimposed controllable stiffness force to augment or diminish the force of the passive spring stiffness which enables us to control the MR-STMD natural frequency. Both the damping and natural frequency are tuned according to Den Hartog’s formulae to the actual dominant frequency of the main structure irrespective of whether it is a resonance or a forced frequency. The MR-STMD is experimentally validated on the Empa bridge with a 15.6 m main span for different added masses to shift its resonance frequency −12.2% and +10.4% away from its nominal value. The experimental results are compared to those obtained when the MR-STMD is operated as a passive TMD that is precisely tuned to the nominal bridge. The comparison shows that the MR-STMD outperforms the TMD both in the tuned and all de-tuned cases by up to 63%. Simulations of the MR-STMD concept point out that the proposed semi-active control algorithm is most suitable for MR-STMDs due to the small amount of clipped active forces. A sensitivity analysis demonstrates that the real MR-STMD could be even more powerful if the force tracking errors in the MR damper force due to the current driver and MR fluid dynamics and remanent magnetization effects could be further reduced. The MR-STMD under consideration represents the prototype of the 12 MR-STMDs that have been running on the Volgograd Bridge since late fall 2011.

This paper investigates numerically and experimentally clipped viscous damping with negative stiffness for semi-active cable damping. From simulations it is concluded that unclipped and clipped viscous damping with negative stiffness is equivalent to unclipped and clipped LQR. It is shown that optimized unclipped viscous damping with negative stiffness generates critical cable damping by an anti-node at the actuator position. The resulting curvature at the actuator position is larger than the curvature close to the anchors due to the disturbance forces which may lead to premature cable fatigue at the actuator position. Optimized clipped viscous damping with negative stiffness does not show this drawback, can be implemented using a semi-active damper and produces twice as much cable damping as optimal viscous damping. Close to the optimal tuning, it leads to approximately the same control force as optimal semi-active friction damping with negative stiffness, which explains the superior cable damping. The superior damping results from the negative stiffness that increases the damper motion. Clipped viscous damping with negative stiffness is validated on a strand cable with a magneto-rheological damper. The measured cable damping is twice that achieved by emulated viscous damping, which confirms the numerical results. A tuning rule for clipped viscous damping with negative stiffness of real cables with flexural rigidity is given.

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SUMMARY Two control approaches for magnetorheological (MR) dampers on cables based on collocated control without state estimation are formulated, which generate amplitude and frequency independent cable damping: cycle energy control and controlled viscous damping (CVD). The force tracking is solved by the inverted Bingham model whose parameters are fitted as function of current and frequency. Cycle energy control and CVD are experimentally validated by hybrid simulations and free decay tests on stay cables of the Sutong Bridge, China, and the Eiland Bridge, the Netherlands. The implementation of CVD on the Russky Bridge, Russia, includes two novelties: the force tracking also takes the actual MR damper temperature into account to ensure precise force tracking for MR damper temperatures −40 to +60 °C and the decentralised real‐time control units with pulse width current modulation are installed next to each MR damper to avoid long direct current (DC) power lines with associated losses and thereby minimise power consumption. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper investigates precise stiffness and damping emulation with MR dampers when clipping and a residual MR damper force constrain the desired control force. It is shown that these force constraints lead to smaller equivalent stiffness and greater equivalent damping of the constrained MR damper force than desired. Compensation methods for precise stiffness and damping emulations are derived for harmonic excitation of the MR damper. The numerical validation of both compensation methods confirms their efficacy. The precise stiffness emulation approach is experimentally validated with the MR damper based semi-active tuned mass damper (MR-STMD) concept of the Wolgograd Bridge . The experimental results reveal that the precise stiffness emulation approach enhances the efficiency of the MR-STMD significantly when the MR-STMD is operated at reduced desired damping, where the impact of control force constraints becomes significant.