A new magnetorheological damper for seismic control

This paper proposes a new MR damper with bidirectional adjusting damping forces to enhance the fail-safe property of the MR damper. The structure of the composite magnetic circuits is improved for the new damper. Four prototype dampers are fabricated and tested by magnetic field tests and dynamic tests. The magnetic field distribution in the damping path and the dynamic properties of the dampers with different input currents are obtained. The Gompertz model is proposed to portray the dynamic behavior of the prototype dampers. The study shows that, due to the improved structure of composite magnetic circuits, the prototype dampers can maintain a medium damping force with zero current input. This behavior may ensure a better fail-safe property and avoid settlement of MR fluid compared with conventional MR dampers. Furthermore, the minimum and maximum output powers of the proposed dampers can be obtained at the states of the negative peak and positive peak of currents inputs, respectively. In addition, the dynamic range of controllable force is wider than that of conventional MR dampers. The analysis further shows that the proposed Gompertz model can precisely portray the nonlinear hysteretic behavior of the proposed dampers without complicated function forms.