An experimental study on using MR damper to mitigate longitudinal seismic response of a suspension bridge

In this paper, the seismic response reduction performance of magnetorheological (MR) damper is experimentally investigated for a suspension bridge. First, the force–displacement and force–velocity curves under a range of excitation frequencies, amplitudes and currents are obtained by mechanical behavior test of the RD1097 type MR damper. Then a new non-linear hysteretic model is proposed to model the mechanical behavior of the MR damper and the model parameters are identified from test data. An experimental method, as well as a set of testing setups with the MR damper for longitudinal seismic response reduction of a SDOF generalized system representing the fundamental longitudinal mode of suspension bridge, is developed. Finally, the seismic response reduction experiment subject to three kinds of earthquake excitations, including the Pingsheng Bridge earthquake wave, the El-Centro wave and the Taft wave, is carried out, and nine control cases, including uncontrolled, six passive control schemes with different input currents and two semi-active Bang–Bang control schemes, are tested. The results verify that the seismic response reduction experimental method is feasible and the good performance of seismic longitudinal response reduction of the suspension bridge can be achieved by MR damper. It is also shown that the passive control with optimum input current outperforms the semi-active Bang–Bang controls.

► A new non-linear hysteretic model of MR damper is proposed.
► An experimental method of seismic response reduction of suspension bridge is developed.
► A set of SDOF experimental setups with MR damper is designed.
► The experiment, including three earthquake excitations and nine cases, is tested.
► Good performance on seismic response reduction can be achieved by MR damper.