Development of Magnetorheological Dampers with Embedded Piezoelectric Force Sensors for Structural Vibration Control

Magnetorheological (MR) dampers with embedded piezoelectric force sensors are developed to enable real-time, closed-loop vibration control of civil and mechanical structures. In this study, a prestress-type piezoelectric force sensor is fabricated and integrated with an actuation-only MR damper to form a smart MR damper possessing the attractive functionality of force sensing-while-damping with a high degree of sensor—damper collocation. Calibration of the piezoelectric force sensor is performed in a servohydraulic material testing system operating in force-controlled excitations of sine and ramp waveforms at different combinations of amplitude and frequency. The sensing and damping performance of the smart MR damper is evaluated by operating the material testing system in displacement-controlled sine and ramp excitations while adjusting different DC control currents to the damper. A good agreement between the piezoelectric force sensor outputs and the material testing system force inputs is observed, besides the highly controllable force—displacement and force—velocity hysteretic characteristics. The results show great promise of deploying the smart MR damper in intelligent structural vibration control systems.