Browsing by Author "Weber, Félix"

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    Development of a long-stroke MR damper for a building with tuned masses
    (2016) Zemp Rene; De La Llera Martin Juan Carlos; Saldias Molina Hernaldo Enrique; Weber, Félix; Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Escuela de Ingeniería; Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. National Research Center for Integrated Natural Disaster Management
    This article deals with the development of a long-stroke MR-damper aimed to control, by reacting on a tuned mass (TM), the earthquake performance of an existing 21-story office building located in Santiago, Chile. The +/- 1 m stroke MR-damper was designed using the nominal response of the building equipped with two 160 ton pendular masses tuned to the fundamental lateral vibration mode of the structure. An extended physical on-off controller, a special current driver, a new real-time structural displacement sensor, and an MR-damper force sensor were all developed for this application. The physical damper and control were experimentally validated using a suite of cyclic and seismic signals. The real-time displacement sensor developed was validated by first using a scaled down building prototype subjected to shaking table tests, and then a real-scale free vibration test on the sensor installed horizontally at the foundation level of a building. It is concluded that the proposed TM and MR-damper solution is technically feasible, and for an equivalent key performance index also defined herein, more economical than a solution based on passive viscous dampers.
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    Experimental analysis of large capacity MR dampers with short- and long-stroke
    (2014) Zemp Rene; De La Llera Martin Juan Carlos; Weber, Félix
    The purpose of this article is to study and characterize experimentally two magneto-rheological dampers with short- and long-stroke, denoted hereafter as MRD-S and MRD-L. The latter was designed to improve the Earthquake performance of a 21-story reinforced concrete building equipped with two 160 ton tuned pendular masses. The MRD-L has a nominal force capacity of 300 kN and a stroke of ±1 m; the MRD-S has a nominal force capacity of 150 kN, and a stroke of ±0.1 m. The MRD-S was tested with two different magneto-rheological and one viscous fluid. Due to the presence of Eddy currents, both dampers show a time lag between current intensity and damper force as the magnetization on the damper changes in time. Experimental results from the MRD-L show a force drop off behavior. A decrease in active-mode forces due to temperature increase is also analyzed for the MRD-S and the different fluids. Moreover, the observed increase in internal damper pressure due to energy dissipation is evaluated for the different fluids in both dampers. An analytical model to predict internal pressure increase in the damper is proposed that includes as a parameter the concentration of magnetic particles inside the fluid. Analytical dynamic pressure results are validated using the experimental tests. Finally, an extended Bingham fluid model, which considers compressibility of the fluid, is also proposed and validated using damper tests.