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Magnetorheological (i.e., MR) dampers are one of the most prospective semiactive 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. A smart passive system based on an MR damper system without including a power supply, controller, and sensors consists of an MR damper and an electromagnetic induction (i.e., EMI) system that uses a permanent magnet and a coil. The electromotive force induced by movement of a structure can control MR damper effectively without any external power supply and control algorithm. This smart passive control system is implemented to verify the effectiveness for seismic protection of benchmark structural control problem for the seismically excited highway bridge, which is based on the newly constructed 91/5 highway over-crossing in Southern California. The results of the numerical simulations show that the presented control system can be beneficial in reducing seismic responses of benchmark bridge structure.

This paper presents a novel electromagnetic induction (EMI) system integrated in magnetorheological (MR) dampers: The added EMI system converts reciprocal motions of MR damper into electiral energy (electromotive force or emf) according to the Faraday’s law of electromagnetic induction. Maximum energy dissipation algorithm (MEDA) is employed to regulate the MR dampers because it strives to simplify a complex design process by employing the Lyapunov’s direct approach. The emf signal, produced from the EMI, provides the necessary measurement information (i.e., realtive velocity across the damper) for the MEDA controller. Thus, the EMI acts as a sensor in the proposed MR-EMI system. In order to evaluate the performance and robustness of the MR-EMI sensor system with the MEDA control, this study performed an extensive simulation study using the first generation benchmark cable-stayed bridge. Moreover, it compared the performance and the robustness of proposed system with those of Clipped-Optimal Control (COC) and Sliding Mode Control (SMC), which were previously studied for the benchmark cable-stayed bridge. The results show that the MR-EMI system reduced the vibrations of the bridge structure more than those of COC and SMC and show more robust performance than that of SMC. These results suggest that EMIs can be used cost-effective sensing devices for MR damper control systems without compromising the performance of them.