Development and characterization of a magnetorheological elastomer based adaptive seismic isolator

By Yancheng Li, Jianchun Li, Weihua Li, B. Samali. Smart materials and structures (Print), 2013

262 citations recorded by the source corpus.

One of the main shortcomings in current base isolation design/practice is lack of adaptability. As a result, a base isolation system that is effective for one type earthquake may become ineffective or may have adverse effect for other earthquakes. The vulnerability of traditional base isolation systems can be exaggerated by two types of earthquakes, i.e. near-field earthquakes and far-field earthquakes. This paper addresses the challenge facing current base isolation design/practice by proposing a new type of seismic isolator for the base isolation system, namely an adaptive seismic isolator. The novel adaptive seismic isolator utilizes magnetorheological elastomer (MRE) for its field-sensitive material property. Traditional seismic isolator design with a unique laminated structure of steel and MRE layers has been adopted in the novel MRE seismic isolator. To evaluate and characterize the behavior of the MRE seismic isolator, experimental testing was conducted on a shake table facility under harmonic cycling loading. Experimental results show that the proposed adaptive seismic isolator can successfully alter the lateral stiffness and damping force in real time up to 37% and 45% respectively. Based on the successful development of the novel adaptive seismic isolator, a discussion is also extended to the impact and potential applications of such a device in structural control applications in civil engineering.

Subfields: Civil and Structural Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a1f08fad2d0f90377e2923d48fe492ee660b1297

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In Civil and Structural Engineering

Citations in the corpus

Performance of a new magnetorheological elastomer isolation system (2014, background): “It is shown that in a full-scale MRE-based isolator the stiffness increases by up to 38% [22].”
A state-of-the-art review on magnetorheological elastomer devices (2014, methodology): “The work by Li et al [20, 78, 79] has proved a feasible”
Experimental study and modeling of a novel magnetorheological elastomer isolator (2013, methodology): “A prototype of a novel MRE base isolator was designed and fabricated [20].”
A state of art on magneto-rheological materials and their potential applications (2018, methodology): “…have been proposed, that is, MRE, MRG, MRPG, MR foam, and MRP (Carlson and Jolly, 2000; Farshad and Le Roux, 2005; Gu et al., 2016; Hu et al., 2006; Li et al., 2013e; Liu et al., 2013; Maranville and Ginder, 2005; Sahin et al., 2007; Shiraishi and Sugiyama, 2014; Wilson et al., 2002; Zapateiro et…”
A highly adjustable magnetorheological elastomer base isolator for applications of real-time adaptive control (2013, background): “The details of the effective stiffness calculation can be found in the authors’ previous publications [25, 45].”
Modeling of a new semi-active/passive magnetorheological elastomer isolator (2014, methodology): “A full-scale base isolator with MREs was shown to be able to increase the maximum force 33-45% depending on the input frequency [24].”