Experimental and analytical studies on stochastic seismic response control of structures with MR dampers

The magneto-rheological (MR) damper contributes to the new technology of structural vibration control. Its developments and applications have been paid significant attentions in earthquake engineering in recent years. Due to the shortages, however, inherent in deterministic control schemes where only several observed seismic accelerations are used as the trivial input and in classical stochastic optimal control theory with assumption of white noise process, the derived control policy cannot effectively accommodate the performance of randomly base-excited engineering structures. In this paper, the experimental and analytical studies on stochastic seismic response control of structures with specifically designed MR dampers are carried out. The random ground motion, as the base excitation posing upon the shaking table and the design load used for structural control system, is represented by the physically based stochastic ground motion model. Stochastic response analysis and reliability assessment of the tested structure are performed using the probability density evolution method and the theory of extreme value distribution. It is shown that the seismic response of the controlled structure with MR dampers gain a significant reduction compared with that of the uncontrolled structure, and the structural reliability is obviously strengthened as well.